Scientist of the Day - Wilson Alwyn Bentley
An elaborate snow crystal, photomicrograph, detail of plate 147, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
Wilson Alwyn Bentley, a Vermont farmer and lover of snowflakes, died Dec. 23, 1931, at the age of 66. Bentley’s career defies labelling; he lived his entire life in Jericho, Vermont, where he shared a large farmhouse with his brother’s family and, while she lived, his mother. He and his brother kept dairy cows and raised potatoes. But Bentley spent most of his time drawing snow crystals, and, after 1885, photographing them. He slowly developed extraordinary skill at doing this, using a large bellows camera with a microscope lens. There was a shed attached to the house with a skylight he could open to admit the falling snow, which he collected on black velvet and coaxed into his camera before the crystals could melt. He recorded his snowflake images on 3x4-inch glass plates. His collection grew, slowly at first – some winters, he was lucky to record 40 usable plates in five months. We call these photomicrographs – photographs taken through a microscope – to distinguish them from microphotographs – very tiny photographs. And, technically, Bentley photographed snow crystals, not snowflakes, which are collections of snow crystals, but we will use the terms interchangeably – after all, his nickname was, and always will be, Snowflake Bentley.
Photograph of Wilson Bentley at work with his camera, frontispiece to Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
No one in the meteorology profession knew what Bentley was doing until 1898, when some of his photographs came to the attention of Cleveland Abbe, head of the U.S. Weather Bureau. Abbe was impressed – no one in his profession had learned how to photograph snowflakes – and corresponded with Bentley, encouraging him, and suggesting he publish some of his photographs. Bentley obliged by writing an article for Popular Science Monthly, illustrated with some of his snowflakes. It was in this article that Bentley first said in print, “no two snowflakes are alike,” an observation that only he was really in a position to make. Soon Bentley’s photographs were being sought by museums and departments of meteorology, and he gradually became better known and respected, at least by meteorologists. Everyone in the town of Jericho thought he was nuts.
Title page, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
Twelve photomicrographs of snow crystals, plate 110, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
Over the course of his life, Bentley accumulated over 5300 glass plates of snowflakes, some of which appeared in a variety of magazine articles, but most of which had not been seen by anyone except Bentley. In the late 1920s, he was persuaded to allow William Humphreys, a meteorologist, to help him select and publish a large selection of his photographs. In 1931, Snow Crystals was published by McGraw-Hill. It contained some explanatory text, but most of the volume is occupied by 227 plates, each of which, with a few exceptions, contains 12 of Bentley’s photographs, for a total of some 2700 images, or roughly half of his life’s work. Most present snow crystals, but a few depict dew on spider webs and frost on windowpanes (sixth image).
Elaborate snow crystals, photomicrographs, plate 147, cropped to plate margins, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931; our first image was enlarged from this plate (Linda Hall Library)
Bentley really loved the beauty of snowflakes, so it is not surprising that the last plate presents the partial text of three 19th-century poems on Snow, Frost, and Dew. We show here the stanza taken from “The Frost,” by Hannah Flagg Gould (eighth image).
Like Nicholas Copernicus before him, Bentley died (of pneumonia) just as his book appeared in print, and it is not known for certain that he saw a copy before he died.
Windowpane frost patterns, photographs, plate 213, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
We were pleased to acquire a first edition of Bentley’s Snow Crystals this past year. It should reside right next to Johann Kepler’s 1611 treatise on the snowflake, another rare treasure, but Bentley’s volume is too tall and has to live in the quarto section of the vault.
Front cover with gold-embossed snowflake, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
All of the images here are from Bentley’s (and Humphreys’) 1931 book. I did not attempt to run down any of Bentley’s photos of snowflakes that appeared in Popular Science Monthly and the Monthly Weather Review, but that might be an interesting project for a subsequent post, to see how well his photographs survived the mechanics of mass printing.
Stanza from the poem “The Frost,” by Hannah Flagg Gould, detail of plate 227, Snow Crystals, by Wilson A. Bentley and William J. Humphreys, 1931 (Linda Hall Library)
There is an excellent biography of Bentley that I can recommend, since I just read it: Duncan Blanchard, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley (1998). It has a nice selection of photos, both by and of Bentley, and was well researched. Bentley’s photographs and notebooks are now either in the Buffalo Museum of Science (the original plates), or in the Jericho Historical Society. There was also a children’s book published the same year as Blanchard’s book, called Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Mary Azarian, which is also excellent (I think it won the Caldecott Medal the next year). I bought it some years ago, not realizing it was a children’s book when I ordered it, so I read it and then gave it to the Library, where it sits right next to Blanchard’s book. Pay us a visit, and you can see all three, including the Bentley and Humphreys original, which will require a detour to the Rare Book Room.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
