William Grill

Jun 22, 2024 | thetimes.com | Gavin Pretor-Pinney |William Grill

The British pharmacist Luke Howard loved clouds so much that he came up with a system for naming them. One winter night in 1802, at a London science society, he declared that we should give clouds Latin names such as cumulus and stratus. We use Latin for plants and animals, he argued — why not clouds? Howard showed his audience cloud paintings indicating the shapes we can learn to recognise, though any name might work only at a particular moment before the cloud changes into a different type.