JULIUS VON HANN. 



491 



It is pleasant to think of his declining years when full of well- 

 earned honor, happy in his troops of friends, happier in his family 

 with his mind undimmed by any weakening of his faculties, he was 

 able to continue in active work until the brief sickness, which brought 

 the end. 



Charles Loring Jackson. 



JULIUS VON HANN (1839-1921). 



Foreign Honorary Member, Class II, Section 1, 1902. 



Nearly half a century ago Julius von Hann began to take his place 

 as the universally acknowledged leader of meteorological science, and 

 for many years previous to his death he stood out head and shoulders 

 above his fellow-workers. He grew up with and himself was, as it 

 were, a large part of the rapid modern development of meteorological 

 science. He was able, through his intense application and industry, 

 and because of his great intellectual powers, not only himself to con- 

 tribute largely to the advance of his science but also to keep closely 

 in touch with all the work which was being done by investigators and 

 writers everywhere. For years his many contributions to the Mefeor- 

 ologische Zeitschrift, often modestly signed J. H., were never-failing 

 evidence of his truly extraordinary grasp of his subject and of the 

 universal range of his reading. He was, as fully as any one human 

 being can be, a living encyclopedia of his chosen science. And this is 

 in no sense to be taken as suggesting that his mind was merely a store- 

 house of dry, hard facts. Hewas very human. He saw the many and 

 varied relations of meteorology and climatology to human life and 

 activities, and he was always on the lookout for opportunity to em- 

 phasize these relations. His writings were always clear, vivid, and 

 interesting. His " Handbuch der Klimatologie," for example, which 

 inevitably has to deal largely with "dry" statistical details, is en- 

 livened throughout by carefully selected, vivid, first-hand descriptions 

 of weather types and of human or botanical responses to the climatic 

 environment. 



His fellow-workers who remain are dynamic or physical meteorolo- 

 gists, or climatologists, or are specializing in this or that subdivision of 

 their science. This is a natural and inevitable situation at the present 



