Richard Hamblyn is a British environmental writer and historian. He is a lecturer in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, and has contributed to the Sunday Times, The Guardian, the Independent, the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books. His books include The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, an account of the life and work of Luke Howard which won a 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize; Terra: Tales of the Earth, a study of natural disasters, a BBC Wales Science Book of the Year; and an anthology of science writing, The Art of Science: a Natural History of Ideas. He has also written four illustrated books on weather in association with the UK Met Office, including The Cloud Book; Extraordinary Clouds; and Extraordinary Weather, and edited Daniel Defoe's first book, The Storm for Penguin Classics. Works written in collaboration with the British landscape photographer Jem Southam include Clouds Descending and The River Winter. 

January 1st, 1965 in (Age 59)