Clippings

Abercrombie was a man of his time…. He was the author of two works that were universally admired: Principles of Meteorological Prediction/Forecasting, with its 63 pages of text and its 65 illustrations, including six color plates; and a book called simply The Weather (472 pages, 96 illustrations), which had become since publication one of the standard references on the subject. Abercrombie possessed the kind of personal courage that impresses the simpleminded and astounds foreigners: One day, in the smoking room of the Meteorological Society of Edinburgh, while debating a member who believed that human fate was absolutely predetermined and that human will would never amount to anything, Abercrombie accidentally severed the tip of his pinkie with a cigar cutter. While applying a tourniquet, made from his own handkerchief, he had countered, to the amazement of his opponent, with a brilliant refutation that had carried the day. Men such as Abercrombie do not change.