Johann Friedrich Wilhelm von Bezold (June 21, 1837 – February 17, 1907)[1] was a German physicist and meteorologist born in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria.

As a scientist, he was mainly interested in the physics of the atmosphere, and he contributed much to the theory of electrical storms.

He considered pseudo-adiabatic processes describing air as it is lifted, expands, cools, and eventually condenses and precipitates its water vapor.

It was Bezold's investigations of Lichtenberg dust figures that were useful to Heinrich Rudolf Hertz during his attempt to physically validate Maxwell's mathematical analysis of electromagnetic waves.

[2] Wilhelm von Bezold (1876) The theory of color and its relation to art and art-industry... translated from the German by S. R. Koehler - digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library