Introduction

During the spring and summer months of 1998, UCSD's Mandeville Special Collections Library was pleased to exhibit a glorious selection of early and important works on meteorology from the collection of Kenneth E. Hill (1915-2001). Already well known for his collection on early voyages to the Pacific Ocean, now part of UCSD's holdings, and for his ornithology collection, now located at Cornell University, Kenneth Hill also developed a collection on the origins of atmospheric science with the same intelligence and diligence that he brought to his earlier collecting interests.

Kenneth Hill's interest in this subject was stimulated through his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II. With a collegiate background in science and mathematics, he was assigned to the "Yorktown" as a navigator. After a year, he was sent for additional training in meteorology, some of which took place with Walter Munk and H.U. Sverdrup in La Jolla at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

For more than fifty years, Kenneth Hill devoted time, talent, and resources to building significant collections of books on subjects that had great personal meaning to him--California history, Pacific voyages, ornithology, Chinese porcelains, and meteorology. He generously donated some of these collections to research libraries and has made other materials available for exhibition. "Weathering the Weather" was the first exhibition of the meteorology volumes. UCSD is honored to mount "Weathering the Weather" electronically and to include selected images from each of the volumes. We greatly appreciated Kenneth Hill's continuing interest in and commitment to the UCSD Libraries, and his generous willingness to share his collections.

L.C. Claassen