Rain God by Ian James Frazer

Available here: https://www.raingod.com.au/

Clement Wragge is sometimes remembered as the colourful and combative Australasian meteorologist whose use of people’s names to nickname cyclones and storms in the 1890s caught on around the world.

Described at the height of his career as Australia’s most famous man and also, derisively, as “The Rain God”, “Inclement” Wragge set standards for a national weather service, pioneered long-range forecasting, and campaigned against massive land-clearing, fearing this assault on nature was reducing rainfall. Years later, after reinventing himself in New Zealand as a travelling science educator, he was feted by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This is the first full biography of Clement Wragge’s rebellious and adventurous life — the strange story of a self-taught meteorologist from England’s industrial Midlands, a 19th century scientist with 21st century anxieties. He trusted in physics perfected by a Creator and held profound fears for humanity, yet had an irrepressible faith in human ingenuity to overcome.

“Flawed genius and flamboyant celebrity, the man who began the practice of naming tropical storms also had everyone talking about climate science when the telegraph was a toddler. The first in-depth biography of Wragge might have taken a hundred years to appear, but Ian James Frazer’s forensically-researched, entertaining, and timely book is worth the wait."

— Eureka Prize-winning journalist and novelist Ian Townsend,
author of The Devil's Eye

“Some great research … I am glad you embarked on this project as he [Wragge] was a global leader in meteorology and his period in Queensland was during the most active period of tropical storms we know of.’’

— Dr Jeffery Callaghan, former head of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s severe weather section.

In-depth review at The Canberra Times site.

Available here: https://www.raingod.com.au/