ESPY, JAMES POLLARD ( 1785-1860 ) . An American meteorologist, the founder of modern physical or theoretical meteorology. lie was horn in Westmoreland County, Pa.; graduated in 1808 at the Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky.; studied law at Xenia, Ohio, and was principal of the academy at Cumberland. Md., from 1812 to 1817. He then became professor of languages in the classical department of the Franklin Insti tute of Philadelphia, where he remained until about 1853, when he resigned in order to devote himself wholly to meteorological lectures and in vestigations. His memoir of 1836 on the theory of storms gained for him the Magellanic prize. In 1840 he visited England and France, and dis cussed his theories in person before the British Association and the French Academy of Sciences. III 18-11 he returned and published his Philosophy of ,Storms. In 1842 the United States Congress
appointed him meteorologist to the War Depart ment, where he established a service of daily weather observations, compiled daily weather maps, traced the progress and development of storms, and submitted, in October, 1843, a first annual report containing a great body of facts. lie was subsequently appointed meteorologist to the Navy Department. In 1852 he was ordered by Congress to continue his researches in connec tion with the Smithsonian Institution, which had already undertaken the collection of meteorolog ical data. Both directly and indirectly we owe to Espy the stimulus and the knowledge that made our present United States Weather Bureau a possibility. An appreciative sketch will be found in Appleton's Popular Science Mont/ay for April, 1889.