author
Robert DeCourcy Ward
1867–1931
A pioneering American climatologist and Harvard teacher, he helped establish climatology as a university field in the United States. His life also reflects a darker side of the era, as he was active in eugenics and anti-immigration campaigns as well as scientific work.
1 Audiobook
Practical Exercises in Elementary Meteorology
by Robert DeCourcy Ward
About the author
Born in Boston in 1867, Robert DeCourcy Ward became one of the best-known American climatologists of his time. He studied at Harvard, later taught there for many years, and is widely described as the first professor of climatology in the United States. He wrote and edited extensively on weather, climate, and geography, helping bring those subjects to a broader academic audience.
Ward's scientific reputation rested on his teaching, scholarship, and work in meteorology and climatology. He contributed articles to major reference works and professional journals, and contemporaries remembered him as an influential scholar and educator.
At the same time, his legacy is deeply complicated. Historical sources also describe him as a prominent advocate of eugenics and restrictive immigration policies, including work connected to the Immigration Restriction League. Any account of his career has to hold both sides together: an important early climate scholar, and a public figure whose political activism supported harmful ideas.