Robert FitzRoy (1805 — 1865)

This British Naval Officer, Hydrographer, Colonial Governor and inventor of the Fitzroy Barometer.

Robert FitzRoy was the captain of the HMS Beagle which sailed around the world from 1831-1836 with a young Charles Darwin aboard as naturalist. In 1854 he became the head of the British Meteorological Department where he was a pioneer of weather forecasting.

He also pioneered the printing of a daily weather forecast in newspapers. FitzRoy virtually invented the term 'forecasting' and did much to initiate the wide-ranging processes of a weather bureau, to the great benefit of those on land and sea alike.

He devised a storm warning system that was the prototype of the daily weather forecast and invented a cheap and serviceable barometer, named after him.

FitzRoy was undoubtedly overtaxed physically and mentally (his staff numbered only three), and suffering from severe mental depression, took his own life on 30 April 1865 at Lyndhurst House, Upper Norwood in Surrey, England.