Here’s a very interesting story from Atlas Obscura about Jacob and Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian father and son who worked together to understand how the atmosphere moves. Before they provided the basic organizing principles we now know describe how fronts and pressure centers work together to move around masses of air from different parts of the world, most weather forecasting was done using old farmers’ rules like “a ring around the moon means rain within 48 hours.” The work that the two did became the standard model of what a weather system looks like that we still use today. You can read this fascinating story here.
