Jon Nelson

Ice, the atmosphere, physics, and climbing…

My aim in writing is to provide some new insight. Also, I try to apply the warning given by Thomas Cardinal Wolsey long ago: "Be very very careful what you put into that head because you will never ever get it back out."

In The Story of Snow, my role was to ensure it had sound science, such as showing that snow grows by vapor deposition, not by water freezing (as is widely misunderstood). In The Story of Ice, I mainly wanted to turn readers on to the many odd forms that ice can take in Nature.

Anyway, I grew up in the woods of New England and the Pacific Northwest, finding frogs and climbing trees. In my teens, I shifted to climbing mountains and in school I liked physics, later focusing on ice and clouds. My studies led me to a faculty position in atmospheric science at the University of Arizona, Tucson. When someone expressed surprise that a guy in the hot desert would study ice, I told them that ice was usually only a few miles away, the direction being straight up!

I later moved to Japan to run a science-journal editing company. Here I became interested in writing popular science. Now, settled back in the Seattle area, I still climb.