Have you ever wondered who it was that first had the bright idea of drawing a weather map? Your reaction to this question, of course, may well be similar to that of the Oxford professor many years ago who received a note from a pretentious colleague inviting his participation in a series of "weekend mathematical colloquia, that may provide much needed computational stimuli for the mens profani vulgi'.
"We have better things to do with our Sunday mornings," he replied, "than sit on our ba and do sa."
But let me tell you anyway. The honour is usually accredited to Heinrich Brandes, who was born in Germany in 1777.
He spent the first 10 years of his adult life as an inspector of dykes on the River Weser, but while thus engaged he developed a considerable expertise in mathematics. So it was that in 1811 he was appointed professor of that subject at the University of Breslau.
Never one to stick contentedly to his last, Brandes regarded this appointment as a heaven-sent opportunity to indulge his lifelong interest in meteorology - that, too, no doubt, stimulated by long contemplation of the drains of northern Germany.
In 1820 he published a book called Beitrage zur Witter ungskunde in which he suggested "weather charts". He described a method for drawing lines on a chart which would show deviations of the atmospheric pressure from the norm - not quite the same thing as isobars, but a plausible notion nonetheless.
There is a mystery, however, about these first weather maps of Brandes. The charts themselves were never published in the book, and sometimes it has been thought they were never drawn at all.
Brandes used the conditional when referring to them: " . . . if we were to prepare weather charts of Europe for each of the 365 days of the year," he wrote, "then it would be possible to determine the limit of the large rain-cloud which lies over France and Germany in July".
But Brandes still retains the laurels. Six years later he was in print again, and this time he produced the maps.
On Rapid Changes in Pressure, published in 1826, includes weather charts which show two large depressions over Europe - one for December 24th, 1821 and the other for February 3rd, 1823.
Although some years out of date, and for this reason quite useless as tools for predicting future weather, the maps added to our understanding of the elements and paved the way for weather forecasting as we know it nowadays.
Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes, inspector of dykes and pioneering weatherman, died 165 years ago today, on May 17th, 1834.