William C Redfield, an American meteorologist, born in Middletown, Conn., March 26, 1789, died in New York, Feb. 12, 1857. In early life he was a mechanic. In some pedestrian journeys he observed the course of the hurricane in September, 1821, long known as the "great September gale," and became convinced that the storm, instead of moving in a straight line, according to what was then supposed to be the law of such storms, had rotated around a central point, and that its movement had been in curved lines. Having established a line of steam tow boats on the Hudson, and taken up his residence in New York, he investigated the connection of steam with navigation, and in pamphlets, essays, and published letters discussed the causes of steamboat explosions, the means of safety, and the necessity of careful and frequent inspection. In 1828 he published a pamphlet urging the importance of a system of railways to connect the waters of the Hudson with those of the Mississippi; and he was largely engaged in promoting railroad construction.

In 1831 he first gave to the public his "Theory of Storms," and three years later an elaborate article on the hurricanes of the West Indies. After 1836 he devoted much time to the investigation of the fossil fish of the Connecticut valley and the sandstones of the Atlantic coast in New Jersey, Virginia, and North Carolina, and made a very large collection of them; and he read before the American association for the advancement of science several papers on those fossils. He published during his life 62 essays, of which 40 pertain to meteorology; the best known are accounts of hurricanes. (See Hur-ricane, and Meteorology).