In the fall of 1869, a thirty-year-old astronomer from New York named Cleveland Abbe, who had recently taken over as director of the fledgling Cincinnati Observatory, became the first person in America to successfully provide regular, practical weather forecasts for the public, based on reports from a network of observers. Less than two years later, he would lead the forecasting efforts at the nation's newly established weather service and set the standard for scientific research in a career that would last nearly half a century. Throughout his life, this "man of gentle and generous ways," guided by his abiding faith, overcame personal and professional hardships in pursuit of science to become the most famous--and celebrated--meteorologist in America, if not the world. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century international events and scientific advancements, this first-of-its-kind biography of Abbe explores both his personal life and his scientific career. It details his time spent in Russia in the mid-1860s--as the Civil War raged and a president was assassinated back home--in part through letters with his parents. Decades of diaries and correspondence from the Cleveland Abbe Papers at the Library of Congress, as well as first-person accounts, illuminate this intimate portrait of a mild-mannered family man whose thirst for knowledge drove him to become a giant in an emerging scientific field.