Nicolaas Kruik

The secretary of the Royal Society at that time, James Jurin, started the first European network of meteorological weather stations, and the Dutch members played a large part.

[3] In 1721 and 1723 Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli travelled to Holland and he and Boerhaave stimulated Kruik to keep systematic observations in the belief that climate changes had an effect on public health.

In 1725 he wrote a famous letter to Willem 's Gravesande, a Dutch professor of physics and astronomy at Leiden, proposing an empirical deductive research method to solve the water problems of the Netherlands.

It was this unified water plan that in turn led to the creation of Haarlemmermeer bij pumping the Haarlem lake dry more than a century later.

It was here that he met Jan Noppen (1706–1734), the Halfweg inspector, who started the earliest continuous weather station in Zwanenburg with measurements three times daily of temperature, air pressure, humidity, and rainfall.

Rijnlandshuis, the Gemeenlandshuis where Cruquius lived and worked in Spaarndam
Kruik's c. 1730 map of the Merwede , the first full-scale depiction of contours of depth ( isobaths ).
Diagram showing the distance of the planets to the earth in 1732, also showing a complete lunar eclipse and a partial solar eclipse in that year