SKETCH OF NIELS H. C. HOFFMEYER. n 5 



SKETCH OF NIELS H. C. HOFFMEYER. 



TO Captain Niels Hoffmeyer meteorology owes some of its most 

 important developments, and particularly the organization of 

 what may be called the first ocean weather service. 



Niels Henrik Cordulus Hoffmeyer was born in Copen- 

 hagen, Denmark, June 3, 1836, the son of Colonel A. B. Hoff- 

 meyer, and died in Copenhagen, February 16, 1884. It was at 

 first intended that he should pursue a professional career, and his 

 studies were begun with a view to that end ; but the plan of his 

 education was changed and he was sent to the military academy. 

 He became an officer when eighteen years old, and was given an 

 appointment in the artillery service when his course had been 

 completed. His military effectiveness was impaired by a dispo- 

 sition to rheumatic fever, from which he had suffered in early 

 youth, so that after having been engaged in the Schleswig-Hol- 

 stein War he was prostrated again in February, 1861 ; and when 

 the army was reduced at the close of that year he was placed on 

 the retired list. Having spent a few months after his recovery in 

 recruiting at the baths, in 1865 he visited France and spent a year 

 in studying the methods and operations of the iron-foundries at 

 Paris and Nantes. Returning to Denmark, he busied himself in 

 furthering the establishment of similar works at Christiansholm, 

 and while thus engaged was appointed to a post in the War De- 

 partment and to be a captain of militia in Copenhagen. 



His sojourn in France was contemporaneous with, Leverrier's 

 activity in meteorological research and experiments, under the 

 impulse of which the principles that distinguish the modern 

 methods in that science were largely developed. The publication 

 of this student's daily weather map of all Europe in the Bulletin 

 International had been begun only two years before. Hoffmeyer's 

 attention was directed to the subject, and he entered into the 

 study of it with an ardor that greatly redounded to the gain of 

 science. He carried his newly aroused enthusiasm in this work 

 into his war office, where he continued his studies ; and when the 

 Meteorological Institute was established in 1872 he was made its 

 director. " There could scarcely be a more fortunate appoint- 

 ment," says Nature, to whose various articles we are chiefly in- 

 debted for the materials of this sketch, " for Hoffmeyer was gifted 

 not only with unusual energy, but also with a very pleasant man- 

 ner, so that he made friends for the new office and for its work 

 wherever he went." 



" It was from a singularly clear and firm apprehension of the 

 characteristics of modern meteorology," Nature says in another 

 article, " and an unflinching application of them to the facts of 



