Collected Scientific Papers of William Henry Dines, B.A., F.R.S.

Abstract

THE Royal Meteorological Society is to be congratulated on its decision to reprint the scientific papers of Mr. W. H. Dines as a memorial to that eminent meteorologist. The book, which has now appeared, fulfils its purpose admirably and is a credit to the Society as well as an honour to one of its most distinguished fellows. England owes a great deal to its band of amateur men of science, and meteorology probably owes more to the amateur than any other of the major branches of science. Mr. W. H. Dines was an amateur in the best sense of the word. He took up meteorology because it made its own appeal to him, no doubt influenced to some extent by the meteorological work of his distinguished father, Mr. George Dines. This compilation of his papers brings home to the reader what a large part Dines played in the development of scientific meteorology in Great Britain; but it also helps those of us who knew the man and read each one of his papers as it appeared to see his work as a whole, and to judge how much of it will be of permanent value and how much of it was laying the foundations on which others have built. It is probably in the last respect that Dines made his greatest contribution to science. Throughout his scientific life Dines was a pioneer; he had the instincts of a pioneer, and the methods of a pioneer. His tools were always of the crudest, without any refinement and without any unnecessary accuracy, but capable of doing the job for which they were designed.

Collected Scientific Papers of William Henry Dines, B.A., F.R.S.

Pp. x + 461. (London: Royal Meteorological Society, 1931.) 15s. net.