Word: ricard
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...palm and olive trees in the garden, their voices were guarded and low. For in one of the mission chambers a venerable, white-haired invalid, with wrinkled, bespectacled eyes and a broad, benignant face, lay on what seemed likely to be his death bed. He was Father Jerome Sixtus Ricard, "The Padre of the Rains," and it seemed that his 80 years could not much longer resist the attacks of an ailing heart...
Dear is the name of Jerome Sixtus Ricard to California Catholics, especially dear to his students in astronomy and meteorology in the University of Santa Clara. Famed is his name among U. S. astronomers. For he whom they were once inclined to describe as as a "mad priest" is now ranked with astronomy's important names...
...first, in a tiny shack among the olives, he worked with a four-inch telescope which had belonged to the College since 1860. In 1895 they bought him a second-hand eight-inch telescope and, because there was not enough money for a scientific mounting, Father Ricard called upon his students to help him improvise a mount. Day by day for years the tall figure in the black gown scanned the sky. Chiefly he trained his poor instrument...
...more than a quarter-century after he had begun, he elucidated a sunspot theory, modestly crediting its discovery to the 17th Century heretic Galileo Galilei. Sunspots, Father Ricard declared, exert a definite influence on weather conditions, cause tidal waves, earthquakes, tornadoes, affect even the moods of animals. After observing sunspots, he forecast California's weather for long advance periods...
Worldwide astronomers scoffed. But Father Ricard had compared 4,000 weather maps with 3,000 sunspot observations, was not to be abashed. Blandly he replied to those who called him an ecclesiastical eccentric, by calling such an eminent astronomer as Herbert Hall Turner of Oxford a "wild theorist." In 1914 he was engaged in patient controversy with Astronomer Albert Porta of Turin, Astronomer Edward Lucien Larkin of Lowe's Observatory, Astronomer William Wallace Campbell of the Lick Observatory (now president of the University of California...