250 



NATURE 



[October 20, 192 1 



GeseUschaft fiir Meteorologie. From 1877 to 

 1885 he was sole editor of that journal, and 

 when, in the latter year, it was combined with the 

 Zeitschrift der Deutschen Meteorologischen GeseU- 

 schaft, under the title which it now bears, Prof. 

 W. Koppcn, of the Seewarte, Hamburg, became 

 his collaborator, and in 1892 Dr. G. Hellmann, of 

 Berlin. More recently Dr. R. Siiring, of Potsdam, 

 shared the editorial duties, and at the beginning of 

 this year Felix Exner, the present director of the 

 Central Anstalt, relieved Hann, whose strength 

 was failing. From its beginning the Zeitschrift 

 has been recognised as the leading meteorological 

 journal of the world, and as indispensable for any 

 library in which the science of meteorology is 

 represented. 



Hann was one of the secretaries of the original 

 international assembly of meteorologists at 

 Leipzig in 1872, a member of the International 

 Meteorological Committee from 1878 to 1898, and 

 president d'honneur of the international confer- 

 ence at Innsbruck in 1905. 



He was not only an exemplary editor of the 

 Zeitschrift, but also an indefatigable contributor. 

 Every number contained articles from his pen. 

 No subject of meteorological interest escaped his 

 notice. He was instrumental in obtaining for the 

 journal all the data for out-of-the-way places that 

 he could hear about. He moved, for example, 

 our Meteorological Council to publish the results 

 of the observations at the stations of the Royal En- 

 gineers and Army Medical Department w-hich had 

 been established through the influence of General 

 Sabine, and more recently he always searched the 

 blue-bocks of our scattered Colonies for informa- 

 tion that would otherwise have been practically 

 inaccessible to meteorologists. The whole world 

 was his parish, and he took great care of it. 



By May i, 1906, Hann had been editor of the 

 Zeitschrift for forty years, and the epoch was 

 marked by the publication of a special volume of 

 contributions made by his friends, pupils, and 

 colleagues. It is known as the " Hann Band." It 

 was edited by Dr. Hellmann, of the Prussian In- 

 stitute, his colleague as editor of the Zeitschrift, 

 and Prof. J. M. Pernter, Hann's successor as 

 director of the Central Anstalt in Vienna. 



In the spring of 1919 Hann's eightieth birth- 

 day was celebrated, and the opportunity was 

 again taken to mark appreciation of his services 

 by the collection of a fund to be placed at the 

 disposal of the \ ienna Academy for the en- 

 couragement of the study to which he had so 

 assiduously and successfullv devoted his life. By 

 that time the disastrous effects of the war upon 

 the finances of Austria had become realised, and 

 Hann, in common with many other Austrian men 

 of science, suffered lamentable privations, under 

 which his health suffered, though he maintained 

 his industry and assiduity. He died in Vienna on 

 October i. 



Hann was a most voluminous author. Vienna 

 was a great centre for the study of Erd-kunde, 

 and the school of meteorology and geophysics, 



NO. 2712, VOL. 108] 



which owed much of its inspiration to Hann, is 

 probably without a parallel in the world. The 

 recital of his work by the Royal Meteorological 

 Society at the award of the Symons medal in 

 1904 refers to 121 titles in the Royal Society 

 catalogue and the following comprehensive 

 books : Astronomical geography, meteorology, 

 and oceanography in " Allgemeine Erd-kunde," 

 published in 1881 by himself conjointly with Profs, 

 riochstetter and Pokorny ; in 1883, " Handbuch 

 der Klimatologie," which has now reached three 

 editions, and is recognised everywhere as the 

 standard work on that subject; in 1887, "Atlas 

 der Meteorologie," forming part 3 of Berghaus's 

 " Physikalischer Atlas"; and, lastly, in 1901, the 

 " Lehrbuch der Meteorologie," "the most 

 thorough treatise in all branches of the science," 

 an indispensable work of reference for all meteor- 

 ologists, which also has now passed into its third 

 edition. 



The amount of information contained in these 

 works is extraordinary, and the method of present- 

 ing it equally remarkable, so much so that Hann's 

 name is a household word wherever meteorology 

 is discussed, and his position as the leading 

 meteorologist of the world is unchallenged. While 

 everything passed under his notice as editor of 

 the Zeitschrift, he had a genius for seeing the 

 bearing and noting the scientific connection of the 

 various contributions of authors writing from 

 many points of view. It is to Hann perhaps more 

 than to anyone else that we owe the advances 

 which have been made in recent years from a 

 heterogeneous collection of meteorological erec- 

 tions towards a meteorological edifice on ordered 

 scientific lines. 



It is not practicable, within the limits of this 

 notice, to make any enumeration of his own con- 

 tributions to the science ; his books are the best 

 guides. From the first, mountain observations 

 were among his favourites, and from that point 

 of view he was the first to discover that a cyclone 

 is in reality a cold creature.- His studies in 

 climatology led him also from the first to insist 

 on the need for precision in the evaluation of 

 mean daily temperature, and in recent years he 

 wrote important papers on the subject with refer- 

 ence especially to the temperatures of tropical 

 countries. 



Hann was, indeed, the chancellor of the realm 

 of meteorology. " It is said that the chief notary 

 or scribe of the Roman Emperor was called 

 chancellor either because he was entrusted with 

 the power of obliterating, cancelling, or crossing 

 out such expressions ... as seemed to him to be 

 at variance with the laws or otherwise erroneous ; 

 or, more probably, because he sat intra cancel- 

 los, within the lattice-work or railings which were 

 erected to protect the Emperor from the crowding 

 of the people." As one reads this definition of 

 what a chancellor was and did, we may well think 

 of Hann, indefatigably occupied in the seclusion 

 of his room in the Hohe Warte of the Imperial 

 City of Vienna, protected from the crowding of 



