SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY, by Rachel Carson. At the dawn of the 19th century, the chemist and amateur meteorologist Luke Howard, still in his 20s, noticed that clouds form in particular shapes under particular conditions. Applying the principles of the newly popular Linnaean taxonomy of the living world to clouds, he named the three main classes cumulus, stratus and cirrus, then braided them into sub-taxonomies. When a German translation reached Goethe, the polymathic poet with a passion for morphology was so inspired that he sent fan mail to the young man who “distinguished cloud from cloud,” then composed a suite of verses about the main classes. It was Goethe’s poetry, translating the lexicon of an obscure science into the language of wonder, that popularized the cloud names we use today.

---

Persons: Rachel Carson, Nikki McClure, Luke Howard, Goethe Organizations: cumulus, stratus, cirrus