Cloud man gets modern honour

Cirrus, cumulus, stratus or nimbus?

LONDON, England -- The man who 200 years ago named the different types of clouds is being honoured at the site of his former home.

Luke Howard was an England amateur weatherman who in 1802 gave cloud types the names still used in the 21st century by scientists around the world.

"Cirrus," "cumulus," "stratus," and "nimbus" may not be familiar tags to those watching the weather forecast at home, but meteorologists use the terms every day.

British television weatherman Michael Fish said: "We are eternally grateful that Luke Howard came up with such an easy and straightforward way of naming clouds."

On Wednesday, English Heritage gave Howard's former north London home a prestigious "blue plaque" in recognition of his achievement.

Emily Cole, blue plaques historian at English Heritage, told the Press Association: "Luke Howard's work is of key significance to meteorologists worldwide, and deserves to be better known by a wider audience."

The Grade II listed building at 7 Bruce Grove, Tottenham, was chosen as the plaque site as this was Howard's home from 1852 until he died in 1864.

Howard was born in London on November 28, 1772 into a Quaker family and went on to work as a chemist, even though it was his study of clouds which earned him lasting recognition.

His breakthrough came in 1802-03, when he delivered a lecture to the Askesian Society, a group he founded with other London-based intellectuals.

In his paper, The Modification of Clouds, Howard outlined the main cloud classifications, naming them for the first time.

His work on clouds is credited with influencing the Romantic movement, particularly the famous sky images in the paintings of Constable and Turner, and the poetry of Coleridge, Shelley and Goethe.

Goethe even penned tributes to Howard in his own time, celebrating him as "the first to hold fast conceptually the airy and always changing form of clouds, to limit and fasten down the indefinite, the intangible and unattainable and give them appropriate names."

Howard, who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1821, wrote widely on meteorology, expanding his study of cloud names in his 1828 work The Climate of London.