Thursday 27 August 2009

1-2pm, in Fenner School FORESTRY LECTURE THEATRE, Forestry building 48

The Idea of Weather: 1660-1860

Julian Holland, Associate of the Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia

Abstract

Weather reports are the almost universal accompaniment to news bulletins.  Their combination of maps, numerical data and forecasts is so familiar as to seem an unarguable commonplace.  Yet the ideas, instruments and practices which underpin the modern scientific understanding of weather had a long development.  A subject as large-scale, amorphous and changeable as the weather was a challenge to the technical resources, intellectual methods and cultural assumptions of past centuries.  Weather forecasting as a modern scientific endeavour only had its modest and controversial beginnings in the 1860s. 

This talk will look at a diverse range of ideas and circumstances which shaped the understanding of weather in the two centuries before weather forecasting began.  This illustrated talk was first presented in June 2008 as the scene-setting paper for a seminar on the history of Australian meteorology held at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney as part of the 150^th anniversary celebrations of Sydney Observatory.

Bio

Julian Holland is a researcher and former museum curator specialising in scientific instruments and nineteenth century science.  He has published extensively in these areas, most recently a chapter on instruments and expeditions in In the wake of the Beagle – Science in the Southern Oceans from the Age of Darwin (2009).  He is an Associate of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia.

The Fenner School Seminar Series is held in the Forestry Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building 48, Linnaeus Way (comes off Daley Road), ANU (Acton) campus, ACT

The seminar will start at 13:00 and finish at 14:00