My purpose in this monograph is to describe the origin and history of the International Society of Biometeorology (ISB). A previous history, covering 1956 to 1996, was written by Wolf H. Weihe (1997). However, his most thoughtful history does not explain why the ISB is an international society instead of just a European society. The answer to this questions partially depends upon an explanation and definition of biometeorology.

Biometeorology is an interdisciplinary science, representing an amalgam of other disciplines: phenology, physiological ecology, and environmental physiology (See Figure 1). When there is some emphasis upon meteorological information, any material originating from these other sciences can rightly be called biometeorology (Folk 1997). What brought these disparate disciplines together?

In 1953, a group of European scientists became interested in combining the disciplines of biology and meteorology. If this group had continued independently, the ISB could have been composed strictly of European scientists. Many organizations of scientists are duplicated in several parts of the globe (for example, the British Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society). The ISB, on the other hand, has been international from the start because of one important formative event described below.

In the United States, a division of the American Meteorological Society with the name Biometeorology had already been formed in 1952. The following year, hoping to interest Americans in this new discipline, Dutch geologist Solco Tromp journeyed to Washington, D.C. He met with Frederick Sargent, Konrad Buettner, and Edgar Folk. Tromp explained to this committee that an active and enthusiastic group had met previously in Paris to discuss the formation of a new society, Biometeorology. The most active members there, along with Tromp, were Hans Ungeheuer and H. Primault. A description of the work for these two scientists is included in the previous history of the ISB (Weihe 1997).

Tromp had laid the foundations in the Paris meeting, but it was the fusion of the dynamism and enthusiasm of Solco Tromp and Frederick Sargent that led to the formation of the ISB. I had not met Solco until he came to meet with us in Washington in June of 1953. Sargent had asked Konrad Buettner and me to come to the meeting. Buettner's opinion was sought because of his many publications on the physics involved in the interaction between animals and the physical environment. I was invited because I was the chair of Physiological Ecology, a division of the Ecological Society. Also, Fred Sargent and I had shared a staff office for years in the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, the first laboratory of Exercise and Enviornmental Physiology in the United States.