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Cleveland Abbe (1838-1916)Abbe grew up in New York City, in a prosperous merchant family descended from New England Puritans. He graduated in 1857 from the Free Academy (now City College) where he excelled in mathematics and chemistry. Thereafter, for two years he taught engineering at Michigan State University and studied astronomy with Franz Brünnow at the University of Michigan. When the Civil War broke out he attempted to enlist in the Union Army, but failed the vision test. During the war years he worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as an assistant to Benjamin Gould, who was an astronomer and head of the longitude department of the U. S. Coast Survey. There he developed an interest in postgraduate study abroad and sought a position in Russia. Otto Struve, director of the Nicholas Central Observatory at Pulkovo, near St. Petersburg, invited him to serve as a supernumerary astronomer. Abbe arrived there early in 1865. Struve set him to reducing the astronomical observations made in the eighteenth century by Astronomer Royal James Bradley in Greenwich, England. While at Pulkovo he acquired fluency in German, the working language of the observatory staff. His exposure to the German culture and scientific methodology left him well prepared and enthusiastic for a career in astronomy. After two years at Pulkovo Abbe returned home. In May 1867 Simon Newcomb at the Naval Observatory in Washington hired him to make computations for the Nautical Almanac. Through an acquaintance, whom he met aboard the ship on his return from Europe, he learned of an opening for director at the Cincinnati Observatory. He realized his fervent goal when the Cincinnati Astronomical Society hired him to begin work in June 1868. Eager to excel, Abbe drew up a far-reaching plan for a full program of astronomical endeavor, reflecting his experience at Pulkovo. Unfortunately, the organization lacked funding. He reacted optimistically, remembering that meteorological conditions directly affect the work of astronomers. He won approval to report on and predict the weather, which would satisfy scientific interest and benefit the public. Weather forecasts could be generated at a minimal expense and perhaps produce income. Thus, Abbe made the career change that determined the rest of his professional life. Abbe and the observatory board got short-term funding from the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. He enlisted 20 volunteer weather observers to report conditions. Western Union agreed to permit his observers to communicate without charge. Those arrangements enabled Abbe to commence forecasting the weather on 1 September 1869. Unfortunately, the funding ran out and forecasts ceased in June 1870. Lacking further budget commitments, Abbe returned to New York. Nonetheless, he had demonstrated the viability of weather forecasting using available technology. Thus experienced, he was ready when Congress mandated the formation of a national storm warning system. He interviewed in Washington and joined the government as its chief meteorologist in January 1871. He remained with the weather service for the next 45 years. In 1912 the Royal Meteorological Society presented Abbe with the Symons Memorial Gold Medal, citing his contribution “to instrumental, statistical, dynamical, and thermodynamical meteorology and forecasting.” Upon Abbe’s death in 1916, Ernest Gold in London wrote, “To us in Europe he was the most outstanding figure in American meteorology since Ferrel and there is no student of the dynamics of the atmosphere who is not under a great debt to him.”
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