Clement Wragge is sometimes remembered as the colourful and combative Australasian meteorologist whose use of people's names to nickname cyclones and storms in the 1890s caught on around the world.

Described at the height of his career as Australia's most famous man and also, derisively, as "The Rain God", "Inclement" Wragge set standards for a national weather service, pioneered long-range forecasting, and campaigned against massive land-clearing, fearing this assault on nature was reducing rainfall. Years later, after reinventing himself in New Zealand as a travelling science educator, he was feted by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This is the first full biography of Clement Wragge's rebellious and adventurous life - the strange story of a self-taught meteorologist from England's industrial Midlands, a 19th century scientist with 21st century anxieties. He trusted in physics perfected by a Creator and held profound fears for humanity, yet had an irrepressible faith in human ingenuity to overcome.