Inigo Owen Jones

Who was Inigo Owen Jones?

Inigo Owen Jones was a meteorologist and farmer. He was born in Croydon, Surrey, England to Owen Jones a civil engineer and a descendant of the architect Inigo Jones. His mother was from the Bernoulli family of mathematicians, and Inigo attributed his interest in meteorology and astronomy to this background.

Comment: Inigo Jones the architect was unmarried. The name Inigo derives through his mother Emilie Susan Bernoulli, who was a granddaughter of Inigo Jones of Lincolnshire. A connection to both the Bernoulli family of mathematicians and the architect Inigo Jones is unproven.

In 1874 Jones's parents migrated to Australia, settling on a property called Crohamhurst in the Glass House Mountains north of Brisbane in eastern Queensland. He became interested in meteorology while working on the family farm. The Queensland Government meteorologist Clement Lindley Wragge was so impressed with Inigo's ability as a schoolboy that he recruited him as an assistant in 1888.

He was for many years a synodsman of the Brisbane diocese of the Church of England.

Jones studied the variation in sunspot cycles that had been discovered by Edouard Bruckner, and came to the conclusion that anomalies were caused by the interaction of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. This became the basis of his long-range weather forecasts, although he never claimed to be able to make day-to-day predictions. Although Jones failed to have his methods recognised as soundly based, by any substantial body of accredited scientific opinion he was widely recognised for his successes, especially by farmers.