Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and the Greenhouse Effect
In 1787 Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, a Swiss aristocrat, made the third ascent of Mont Blanc and later that year was elected a member of the Royal Society of London. The honour was not a consequence of his conquest of the highest mountain in the Alps. He was nominated before that ascent, in recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements in the fields of botany, physics, meteorology, glaciology, petrology, and geology a word he was first to coin. No man has greater claim to the title of father of Earth Science than H-B. de Saussure.
From an early age he had been fascinated by the icy peaks of the Alps, especially from a scientific point of view. A major problem for scientists at that time was why are the high mountains covered with ice. His thoughts on this problem are contained in Chapter XXXV of his 8 volume record of his exploration of the Alps "Voyages dans les Alpes". The chapter title can be translated as "The Cause of the Cold that Reigns on the Mountains." My English translation of the whole chapter is attached to the Travels page.
As part of his investigations, H-B. de Saussure compared the solar radiation arriving at the top of the mountains and on the plains using an instrument that he had invented and to which he had given the name heliothermométre. A description of the development and other uses of this apparatus were published in a letter to the Journal de Paris. I transcribed the letter into modern French, and then translated it into English. Both those documents are attached to the Letter page. |
Statue of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, facing Mont-Blanc, in Chamonix, France.
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