[
    {
        "id": 207024,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 95,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "Fr. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.\n\n89\n\nfirst meeting of the International Meteorological Organization's Regional Association II which was held at Hong Kong in January 1937.*\n\nIn May 1949 he attended the Conference on Storm Warning Procedures at Manila, which established relevant definitions, standards and procedures for the World Meteorological Organization. However, the revolution in China and its associated nationalism had overtaken Zikawei (1947) and he was refused permission to return to China. The then Director of the Royal Observatory Hong Kong, Mr Heywood, found a place for Fr Gherzi on the staff and he worked there until asked by the Portuguese authorities to help reorganise and equip the Macau Observatory.\n\nWhile in Hong Kong, he finished his two-volume work on the 'Meteorology of China'. Certain sections of the draft manuscript, particularly those on tropical cyclones, were hotly disputed by some staff members and led to much animated discussion. The volumes were eventually published in Macau in 1951 and whilst they suffer, in places, from being out of date and lacking in accuracy—Fr Gherzi's notes remained in China—the books were a good record of the climatology of the Far East and of the experiences of himself and others in typhoons.\n\nIt was during the years that Fr Gherzi spent in Hong Kong and Macau that I was fortunate enough to get to know him quite well. He was a competent organist and after work I would sometimes accompany him to the Rosary Church to listen to his playing—Bach was a favourite—or he would come to my quarters to hear records and take a considerable number of glasses of sherry—his preferred drink. He was game for most activities and his majestic figure often looked out of place in the rudimentary sports car or sailing junk that I used in those days. Over the years, Fr Gherzi developed a technique of using cocktail parties to good advantage; on joining them he would charge his glass with sherry and, whilst stroking his grandee's beard, look for the most senior naval person present. He would then disarmingly engage the poor fellow in typhoon talk and eventually succeed in getting him to donate a radar or other piece of electronic equipment of which the good Father was in need.\n\n*This paragraph records two 'firsts' for Hong Kong in the field of international meteorology. Hong Kong is a member of the World Meteorological Organization in its own right on account of these early developments.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207025,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 96,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "90 \n\nG. J. BELL \n\nInfluential contacts in London and Washington—usually naval officers whom he had first met as young men and who had subsequently attained high rank—would be called upon to ensure that the gifts were promptly regularised and confirmed. By these means he succeeded in getting radars, radios and associated equipment for all three Observatories—Zikawei, Hong Kong and Macau. It is remarkable that although cut off from the mainstream of meteorological research during World War II, yet he taught himself to understand and service new and complex radar sets. \n\nIn 1954, at the age of 68, Fr Gherzi moved to the United States of America, staying briefly in Saint-Louis and New Orleans before moving in 1955 to the Observatory of Geophysics in the College Jean-de-Brébeuf, Montreal. He occupied the post of Director of Research in the Observatory and maintained his interest in the measurement of solar radiation, ionospheric soundings and atmospheric electricity. Although no longer engaged in routine weather forecasting he still went out of his way to communicate with ships' officers and in his last letter to me, in 1969, he enclosed a photograph of himself on the bridge of the Leonardo da Vinci (See plate 51 to this Journal). \n\nFr Gherzi contributed an article to Weather on the 'Derivation of the word \"Typhoon\"' (1953) and he would be delighted to notice that 13 years after his long letter to the Editor on 'Unrealistic Weather Maps over Continents' (1954) the same point should again be made in a paper in Weather (Walker 1967). Fr Gherzi received international recognition for his work in so far as he was honoured by membership of the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Academies of Science in both Lisbon and New York and, of course, he was made welcome in observatories in the Far East and North America. However, nothing gave him more pleasure than to be in contact with, and of help to, mariners and aviators whom he served so well and so long.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207026,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 97,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "REFERENCES\n\nChichester, F.\n\n1964 The Lonely Sea and Sky. Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., London, Chap. 20.\n\nGherzi, E.\n\n1923 Etude sur les microseismes. Notes de Seismologie, Obs. Zikawei No. 5, pp. 1-16.\n\n1925 Typhoons and statics. The Marine Observer, Met. Off., London.\n\n1932 Cyclones and microseisms. Gerlands Beitr. Geophysik, 36, p. 20.\n\n1946 Ionospheric reflections and weather forecasting for Eastern China. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 27, p. 114.\n\n1947 Zikawei observatory. Weather, 2, p. 181.\n\n1950 Ionosphere and weather. Nature, 165, p. 38.\n\n1951 Meteorology of China. 2 Vols. Imprensa Nacional de Macau.\n\n1952 Ionosphere and Weather. Scientific Note No. 3, The Observatory, Macau.\n\n1953 Derivation of the word 'Typhoon'. Weather, 8, p. 144.\n\n1954 Unrealistic weather maps over continents. Ibid, 9, p. 386.\n\nWalker, J. M.\n\n1967 Subterranean isobars. Ibid, 22, p. 296.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    }
]