A CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN PHYSICS 387 



the other three would have been similarly honored had 

 not their important work been published prior to the 

 institution of this award. All four occupy high places 

 in the ranks of the world's great men of science, and the 

 investigations carried out by them and their fellow 

 workers in America have given to their country a posi- 

 tion in the annals of physics which is by no means insig- 

 nificant. 



The Journal's Part in Meteorology. 



The meteorological investigations published in the 

 early numbers of the Journal have played an important 

 role in establishing a correct theory of storms. Before 

 the origin of the United States Signal Service in 1871 no 

 systematic weather reports were issued by any govern- 

 mental agency in this country, and consequently the work 

 of collecting as well as interpreting meteorological data 

 rested entirely in the hands of interested individuals and 

 institutions. The earliest important studies of storms 

 to appear in the Journal were contributed by Redfield of 

 New York, whose first paper (20, 17, 1831) treated in 

 considerable detail a violent storm which passed over 

 Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1821. 

 He concluded that 1 1 the direction of the wind at a partic- 

 ular place, forms no part of the essential character of a 

 storm, but is only incidental to that particular portion 

 ... of the track of the storm which may chance to 

 become the point of observation, . . . the direction of 

 the wind being, in all cases, compounded of both the rota- 

 tive and progressive velocities of the storm." A few 

 years later, analyses of twelve "gales and hurricanes of 

 the Western Atlantic" (31,115, 1837) led to the statement 

 that the phenomena involved "are to be ascribed mainly 

 to the mechanical gravitation of the atmosphere, as con- 

 nected with the rotative and orbital movements of the 

 earth's surface." In this paper is emphasized the fact 

 that the wind may blow in diametrically opposite direc- 

 tions at points near the storm center. "While one ves- 

 sel has been lying-to in a heavy gale of wind, another, not 

 more than thirty leagues distant, has at the very same 

 time been in another gale equally heavy, and lying-to 

 with the wind in quite an opposite direction. ' ' From an 



