FR

Urbain Le Verrier, Head in the Clouds (1811-1877, Year of Entry: 1831)

Urbain le Verrier spent his life searching for the logic behind the chaos of the stars and the climate. Armed only with his own calculations, he managed to discover Neptune without a telescope, and later developed an atmospheric observation network from scratch, which went on to become the French National Meteorological Service, Météo-France.