Nicolaas (Klaas) Kruik (December 2, 1678,
VlielandVlieland is a municipality in the northern Netherlands. The municipality of Vlieland has only one major town: Oost-Vlieland . It is the second-least densely populated municipality in the Netherlands .Vlieland is one of the West Frisian Islands, lying in the Wadden Sea...
- February 5, 1754,
SpaarndamSpaarndam is a small village in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands, on the Spaarne and IJ rivers. The oldest part of the village, on the western side of the Spaarne, belongs to the municipality of Haarlem; the newer part on the eastern side is a part of the municipality of...
), also known as
Nicolaes Krukius or most commonly by the latinized
Nicolaus Samuelis Cruquius, was a Dutch land surveyor, cartographer, and weatherman. He is remembered most today for the
Museum De CruquiusThe Museum De Cruquius occupies the old Cruquius steam pumping station in Cruquius, The Netherlands. It derives its name from Nicolaas Kruik , a Dutch land-surveyor and one of many promotors of a plan to pump the Haarlemmermeer dry. Like many well-educated men of his time, he latinized his name...
bearing his name.
He was a perfectionist who liked to measure things and he calculated temperature measurements in
FahrenheitFahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Today, the scale has been replaced by the Celsius scale in most countries; it is still in use for non-scientific purposes in the United States and a few other nations, such as...
from 1706 to 1734.
Nicolaas (Klaas) Kruik (December 2, 1678,
VlielandVlieland is a municipality in the northern Netherlands. The municipality of Vlieland has only one major town: Oost-Vlieland . It is the second-least densely populated municipality in the Netherlands .Vlieland is one of the West Frisian Islands, lying in the Wadden Sea...
- February 5, 1754,
SpaarndamSpaarndam is a small village in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands, on the Spaarne and IJ rivers. The oldest part of the village, on the western side of the Spaarne, belongs to the municipality of Haarlem; the newer part on the eastern side is a part of the municipality of...
), also known as
Nicolaes Krukius or most commonly by the latinized
Nicolaus Samuelis Cruquius, was a Dutch land surveyor, cartographer, and weatherman. He is remembered most today for the
Museum De CruquiusThe Museum De Cruquius occupies the old Cruquius steam pumping station in Cruquius, The Netherlands. It derives its name from Nicolaas Kruik , a Dutch land-surveyor and one of many promotors of a plan to pump the Haarlemmermeer dry. Like many well-educated men of his time, he latinized his name...
bearing his name.
He was a perfectionist who liked to measure things and he calculated temperature measurements in
FahrenheitFahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Today, the scale has been replaced by the Celsius scale in most countries; it is still in use for non-scientific purposes in the United States and a few other nations, such as...
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 (isobaths) in his map of the
MerwedeThe Merwede is the name of several interconnected stretches of river in The Netherlands, all part of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta. The Meuse river joins the Waal at Woudrichem to form the Boven Merwede...
was the first of its kind. He was an advocate of pumping out the
HaarlemmermeerHaarlemmermeer is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is a polder, consisting of land reclaimed from water, and the name Haarlemmermeer means Haarlem's Lake, still referring to the body of water from which the region was reclaimed in the 19th century.Its main...
(Haarlem lake), which was done a century after his death.
Biography
He became a surveyor at the age of 19 and began to draw maps, a lucrative job in his day. Though born in Vlieland, he moved to
DelftSee also: Delft, Cape Town, Delft IslandDelft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands...
a few years after he was born and it is there in 1705 that he started his first weather observations. In 1717 at the age of 39, though firmly established as a respected surveyor, he moved to the family farm in
RijnsburgRijnsburg is a community in the eastern part of the city Katwijk, in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The name means Rhines Burg in Dutch.-History:...
outside Leiden and chose to study in
LeidenLeiden is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants. It is located on the Old Rhine, close to the cities...
under
Herman BoerhaaveHerman Boerhaave was a Dutch botanist, humanist and physician of European fame. He is regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital. His main achievement was to demonstrate the relation of symptoms to lesions.-Life:He was born at Voorhout near Leiden...
, at that time the most famous scientist in the Netherlands. He signed himself in as "Krukius, medical student, born in Delft". Thanks to Boerhaave, Kruik became a member of the Royal Society of London. The secretary of the Royal Society at that time,
James JurinJames Jurin FRS FRCP was an English scientist and physician, particularly remembered for his early work in capillary action and in the epidemiology of smallpox vaccination...
, started the first European network of meteorological weather stations, and the Dutch members played a large part.
In 1721 and 1723
Luigi Ferdinando MarsigliCount Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli , was an Italian soldier and naturalist.He was born in Bologna. He was a member of an old patrician family and was educated in accordance with his rank...
traveled to Holland and he and Boerhaave stimulated Kruik to keep systematic observations in the belief that climate changes had an effect on public health. Kruik started to travel the various beaches and rivers in the Netherlands and study the waterlevels while continuing his mapmaking work. On these trips he was sometimes accompanied by Boerhaave and Marsigli. While studying the Merwede, he began to form plans to help keep the lower areas of the Netherlands dry. It was at this time that Kruik changed his name to the Latin
Cruquius after his first publications of maps and measurements. In 1725 he wrote a famous letter to
Willem 's GravesandeWillem Jacob 's Gravesande was a Dutch philosopher and mathematician. Born in 's-Hertogenbosch, he studied law in Leiden, and wrote a thesis on suicide. He was praised by John Bernoulli, when he published his book Essai de perspective. In 1715 he visited London and King George I. He became a...
, a Dutch professor of physics and astronomy at Leiden, proposing an empirical deductive research method to solve the water problems of the Netherlands. This letter started the chain of events in working that eventually led to a plan presented to the
United ProvincesUnited Provinces may refer to:* United Provinces, another name for the Dutch Republic , now The Netherlands* United Provinces of Agra and Oudh , a former province of British India; now Uttar Pradesh...
to create a water defense plan in 1727. It was this unified water plan that in turn led to the creation of
HaarlemmermeerHaarlemmermeer is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is a polder, consisting of land reclaimed from water, and the name Haarlemmermeer means Haarlem's Lake, still referring to the body of water from which the region was reclaimed in the 19th century.Its main...
bij pumping the Haarlem lake dry more than a century later.
In 1733 he became a member of the 'Hoogheemraadschap Rijnland', the Dutch Waterboard Agency, and worked as a Waterboard inspector in
SpaarndamSpaarndam is a small village in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands, on the Spaarne and IJ rivers. The oldest part of the village, on the western side of the Spaarne, belongs to the municipality of Haarlem; the newer part on the eastern side is a part of the municipality of...
. It was here that he met Jan Noppen (1706-1734), the
HalfwegHalfweg is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude, and lies about 8 km east of Haarlem...
inspector, who started the earliest continuous weatherstation in
ZwanenburgZwanenburg is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, and lies about 11 km west of Amsterdam.Zwanenburg has a population of around 7,670....
with measurements 3 times daily of temperature, air pressure, humidity, and rainfall.
An eccentric man, Kruik wrote music, and had an obsessive need to measure things. This need included measuring his own weight and amount of urine daily. According to contemporary accounts, only Boerhaave could successfully work with him.
External links