Fontserè i Riba, Eduard

Barcelona 1870 - Barcelona 1970. Astronomer, Meteorologist, Seismologist

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Eduard Fontserè was born into a prominent Barcelona family. His uncle, Josep Fontserè, was the city architect of Barcelona and was responsible, among other projects, for the original design of the Ciutadella Park. His father, also named Eduard Fontserè, was experiencing financial difficulties as a result of having refused to swear allegiance to the monarchical Constitution of 1876. He worked as a hydraulic engineer, and this refusal cost him many commissions. Although Eduard senior had scientific interests, his circumstances led him to want his son to pursue a secure profession. Nevertheless, Eduard enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences in Barcelona, where he graduated in 1892. Recognising his talent, his professors encouraged him to continue his studies in Madrid and obtain a doctorate. In 1893, he submitted a dissertation on the rotation of the Sun based on astronomical and physical observations.

On his return to Barcelona, he was appointed by the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona [Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona] as a technician for its observatories, located on the roof of its headquarters on La Rambla, which was then undergoing renovation. In 1891, the Academy had established the Servei de l’Hora Oficial [Official Time Service]. Fontserè joined the service and remained responsible for it for decades, retiring only in 1961 at the age of ninety-one. At that time, he determined local time by observing the passage of stars across the Academy’s meridian and was responsible for synchronising the city’s public clocks.

In 1893, with the support of the Sociedad Española Protectora de las Ciencias [Spanish Society for the Promotion of Science], an organisation promoted by the academic and physics professor Eduardo Lozano, Eduard Fontserè took charge of an astronomy course taught at the Academy. In February 1896, assisting Lozano, he presented a series of radiographs at the Academy—very likely the first X-ray images shown in Spain—only a few months after Wilhelm Röntgen had announced the discovery of X-rays in December 1895.

In 1895, Fontserè was appointed an unpaid assistant in the Faculty of Sciences. In 1898, he was employed as a science teacher at the Granja Experimental de la Diputació de Barcelona [Experimental Farm of the Provincial Council of Barcelona]. Its director, Hermenegildo Gorria, had established the Xarxa Meteorològica de Catalunya i Balears [Meteorological Network of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands] two years earlier, and Fontserè joined it as coordinator of the observers. This was his first experience as a meteorologist.

Fontserè regularly attended a discussion group with members of the Academy, where the idea emerged of creating an astronomical observatory free from the environmental limitations affecting the Academy’s facilities on La Rambla. In 1894, Fontserè prepared the scientific project, while the academic Josep Domènech i Estapà designed an observatory to be built on the summit of Tibidabo. The Academy submitted the proposal to the Provincial Council, but it was rejected. The situation changed several years later thanks to a donation from the businessman and former mayor of Barcelona, Camil Fabra Fontanills. This time, the Provincial Council agreed to support the project.

In 1900, Josep Comas i Solà, a former fellow student of Fontserè, was elected a member of the Academy. Comas had already embarked on a career in astronomy, in which Fontserè had occasionally collaborated. The Academy appointed Comas director of the new observatory, overlooking Fontserè, who at that time was merely an employee of the institution. This strained relations between the two astronomers. In 1905, the new Observatori Fabra [Fabra Observatory] was inaugurated on a secondary peak of Tibidabo.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Fontserè won the Chair of Rational Mechanics in the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Barcelona in 1900. In fact, he had previously secured the Chair of Geodesy in 1899, but the subject was abolished as part of the university reforms of 1900. In 1909, he was elected a member of the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona. The following year, he became one of the founders of the Societat Astronòmica de Barcelona [Astronomical Society of Barcelona]. Within this organisation, he further developed his work in meteorology.

In 1912, José Galbis, director of the Observatori Central Meteorològic [Central Meteorological Observatory], proposed the creation of an aerological station in Barcelona as part of a European project to study the vertical structure of the atmosphere. Fontserè persuaded the Science Section of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans [Institute of Catalan Studies], established the previous year, to take responsibility for the station.

That same year, he was appointed director of the Meteorological and Seismological Section of the Fabra Observatory, while the Astronomical Section remained under the direction of Josep Comas. Fontserè reorganised the Meteorological and Seismological Section and equipped it with new instruments. He strengthened networks of collaborators in both meteorology and seismology. At the observatory, he found one of his closest collaborators in Gabriel Campo Cunchillos, who became a highly skilled meteorologist, particularly in weather forecasting. Another important collaborator was Ramon Jardí, a colleague from the Faculty of Sciences, who was responsible for the observatory’s geophysical instrumentation.

The governmental reforms introduced by the Mancomunitat de Catalunya [Commonwealth of Catalonia] enabled Fontserè to present a proposal for a Catalan Meteorological Service. The idea was to coordinate the observations of a large and active network of volunteer observers whom he had come to know through both the Experimental Farm Network and the Astronomical Society of Barcelona, where he had already organised a system for coordinating meteorological observers.

In 1919, the Mancomunitat de Catalunya established the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya [Meteorological Service of Catalonia], and Fontserè was appointed its director. The service did not become fully operational until 1921, when funding was finally secured. In the meantime, thanks to José Galbis, Fontserè had already participated in Paris in 1919 in the reorganisation of meteorology after the First World War. In 1921, he was elected a member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

The Meteorological Service began operating in 1921. As a public service, one of its principal objectives was to provide a daily weather forecast, distributed to various institutions and disseminated through the Mancomunitat’s telephone network. At the same time, the Service promoted studies of Catalonia’s climate through its Notes d’Estudi [Research Notes]. The patron Rafael Patxot funded, through the Fundació Concepció Rabell [Concepció Rabell Foundation], a programme for photographing clouds, which resulted in an atlas published in 1925 for use by the Service’s collaborators.

The Service gained further prominence when it began participating in broadcasts on Ràdio Barcelona, which had started transmitting in 1924. This was during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. In 1925, the Service requested permission to broadcast meteorological bulletins but was not authorised to do so until 1927, when two daily bulletins began to be transmitted. This was a pioneering initiative on a global scale. During the dictatorship, the Service switched from Catalan to Spanish while maintaining its development. Following the proclamation of the Republic, Catalan once again became its working language. In 1932, as part of the Second International Polar Year (1932–1933), the Service inaugurated an observatory at Turó de l’Home as a permanent mountain station, together with a temporary station at Sant Jeroni on Montserrat.

The Comissió Internacional de Núvols [International Cloud Commission] met in Barcelona in 1929. One of its objectives was the publication of a new International Cloud Atlas. Rafael Patxot offered to finance the project on the condition that a Catalan edition would be produced in 1935 alongside the French, English and German versions. Eduard Fontserè played an active role in the democratisation of the University of Barcelona. Following the proclamation of the Republic in 1931, he joined the commission that assumed responsibility for the University and drafted the Statute of University Autonomy, which was approved in 1933. This autonomy enabled him to take up the newly created Chair of Geophysics, the first of its kind in Spain. In addition, in 1932 he promoted the creation of the Societat Catalana de Ciències Físiques, Químiques i Matemàtiques [Catalan Society of Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences] as an affiliated society of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. In 1935, he also promoted the creation of another affiliated society, the Societat Catalana de Geografia [Catalan Geographical Society].

The Statute of University Autonomy was suspended when right-wing parties came to power in the Government of the Republic. For the first time, the Meteorological Service was placed under state control for several months in 1934 and 1935. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Fontserè participated in the creation of the Servei d’Astronomia de la Generalitat [Astronomical Service of the Generalitat of Catalonia], directed by Josep Comas i Solà. The establishment of this service provided the Astronomical Section of the Fabra Observatory with a source of funding. It should be remembered that meteorology had already been incorporated into the Generalitat, while the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona had been recognised as a cultural institution of the Generalitat.

When Franco’s troops occupied Catalonia in January 1939, they were accompanied by members of the Spanish Meteorological Service, which had by then been militarised. The Service occupied the premises and confiscated all its scientific equipment and documentation. Fontserè believed that the material had been destroyed, but fortunately a substantial portion of the documentation survived and was returned to the Generalitat in 1980. It is now preserved in the Map Library of the Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya [Catalan Cartographic and Geological Institute].

Fontserè turned seventy in 1940, and this allowed the Francoist rector of the University, Emili Jimeno, to exempt him from the political purges that affected such a large proportion of the University’s academic and administrative staff. Over the following thirty years, Fontserè remained active at the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona and at the Fabra Observatory. He was honoured on the occasions of his eightieth, ninetieth and hundredth birthdays. During this period, together with his son-in-law, the geographer Josep Iglésies, he prepared a monograph compiling historical documentation on the seismology of Catalonia. The work was published posthumously.

In 1942, Fontserè took part in the revival of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. The new regime never formally abolished the institution; rather, as an organisation dependent on the Provincial Council, it simply lost its premises and funding. Members residing in Barcelona decided to resume meetings and publications as a private initiative. One of these publications was a Catalan meteorological vocabulary, another pioneering undertaking.

Major works

Atlas elemental de núvols [Elementary Cloud Atlas] (1925)
La tramuntana empordanesa i el mestral del golf de Sant Jordi [The Tramuntana of Empordà and the Mistral of the Gulf of Sant Jordi] (1930)
L’anomalia tèrmica de la plana de Vic [The Thermal Anomaly of the Vic Plain] (1937)
Elementos de meteorología [Elements of Meteorology] (1943)
Assaig d’un vocabulari meteorològic català [Essay Towards a Catalan Meteorological Vocabulary] (1948)
Una visió meteorològica del Turó de l’Home [A Meteorological View of Turó de l’Home] (1950)
Recopilació de dades sísmiques de les terres catalanes entre 1100 i 1906 [Compilation of Seismic Data from the Catalan Lands between 1100 and 1906] (1970)