564 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



Meteorologie in Vienna ; six years later, in 1874, he became director 

 and held that office until 1897, when at the age of 58 he retired. His 

 retirement was only from official duties; from meteorology he could 

 not retire until the very presence of death made further work im- 

 possible. The first fruit of his relief from official duties was his 

 Lehrbuch der Meteorologie, which was written between the autumn 

 of 1898 and August, 1900, in the Physitealische Institut in Graz. 

 This book, which was so different from any previous textbook of 

 meteorolog}^ became at once the recognized standard book of refer- 

 ence, and from 1900 onwards practically no major piece of meteoro- 

 logical work has been published which does not draw upon the 

 Lehrbuch for facts and data. 



Hann's Handbuch der Klimatologie, which had been written 

 while he was still director of the Central-Anstalt, is probably better 

 known to British meteorologists than the Lehrbuch, for the only 

 reason that it has been published in an English translation. It is 

 surprising how readable Hann has made this book, dealing, as it 

 does, with little more than a mass of climatological statistics collected 

 from all parts of the world. But that is one of the great charms of 

 Hann's writing, that he is able to present the driest of meteorological 

 facts in a pleasing and enticing manner. In the Klimatologie this 

 end has been reached by leaving in so much of the original work 

 from which the information has been extracted. It helps even a 

 meteorologist to enjoy the account of the climate of a place if he 

 knows that the data were provided by a Livingstone, a Franklin, or 

 a Scott. 



The Klimatologie and the Meteorologie are Hann's largest indi- 

 vidual works, but it is questionable whether the writing of these 

 books is his most valuable contribution to meteorology. Probably 

 science owes more to him for the mass of information he has rescued 

 from oblivion and preserved in the Meteorologische Zeitschrift, of 

 which he was the editor, or joint editor, from 1866 to 1920, the Zeit- 

 schrift in the meantime undergoing several changes both in name 

 and control. 



Hann has received many honors, national and international; 

 probably of all of these, those which he most appreciated were the 

 issue in 1906 of a special volume of the Zeitschrift called the Hann 

 Band, to celebrate his 40 years of editorship, and the spontaneous 

 exhibition of esteem which he received on his eightieth birthday 

 from all parts of the world in spite of the disastrous effects of the 

 war on international relationships. 



Hann was born on March 23, 1839, and died on October 1, 1921 — 

 a long life, a full life, and a life for which every meteorologist has 

 cause to be grateful. 



