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Henrik Mohn

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"HENRIK MOHN (1835-1916), Norwegian meteorologist, was born at Bergen May 15 1835, his family being of German origin. He was educated at the Cathedral school, Bergen, and afterwards entered the university of Christiania, where he took his doctor's degree in 1852. In 1861 he became an observer at the Christiania observatory, in 1866 was elected professor of meteor-

ology at Christiania University, and in 1866 was appointed. director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, which he was largely instrumental in founding. He retained this post until 1913. Mohn's meteorological researches were of the highest: importance. His Etudes sur les mouvements de l'atmosphere, written in collaboration with the mathematician Goldberg (1876-8), is a work of great value for the study of the dynamics of the atmosphere, and the authors continued their researches on the subject in various papers contributed to the Zeitschrift der Oest. Meteor. Gesell. (1877-8). Mohn did much work on the subject of storms, publishing storm maps of the Atlantic (1870-1;1, and he also carried out researches (1876-8) on the meteorology and oceanography of the northern Atlantic. He worked ou t and published the meteorological observations of various polar expeditions, including those of Nansen in the " Fram " (1893-6), the second " Fram " expedition (1898-1902), and Amundsen's south polar journey (1910-2), some of his papers appearing as supplements to Petermann's Mitteilungen. He also published many articles on the climate of Norway and conducted investigations into the use of the hypsometer, which are of great importance for the study of the physics of the earth. Besides the works mentioned above, he produced Grundziige der Meteorologic, which has gone through numerous enlarged editions since its first appearance in 1872 as a small text-book. Mohn was a member of many foreign scientific societies, and was senior hon. member of the Royal Meteorological Society of London, having been elected in 1874. He died at Christiania Sept. 12 1916.