Nicolaas Kruik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nicolaas Kruik (1678–1754) was a Dutch land surveyor, cartographer, and weatherman. He is remembered most today for the Museum De Cruquius bearing his name.

He was a perfectionist who liked to measure things and he calculated temperature measurements in Fahrenheit from 1706 to 1734. His historical calculations are still used today by the KNMI, the Dutch meteorological institute. He not only measured weather changes in wind speed, rainfall, air pressure, temperature, and humidity, but also measured sea level. His method of visualizing planes of water level to illustrate contours of depth in his map of the Merwede was the first of its kind. He was an advocate of pumping out the Haarlemmermeer (Haarlem lake), which was done a century after his death.

An eccentric man who studied in Leiden under Herman Boerhaave, Kuik changed his name to the Latin Cruquius after his first publications of maps and measurements. His obsessive need to measure things included measuring his own weight and amount of urine daily.

[edit] External links

• Museum De Cruquius website
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Article on Haarlem lake and article on Map