Our history
The Swiss Meteorological Society was founded on 8 August 1916 in Scuol/Schuls on the initiative of A. de Quervain, R. Billwiller, A. Riggenbach and P.-L. Mercanton. Until 1969 it was called the Swiss Society for Geophysics, Meteorology and Astronomy (GMA) and was a section of the Swiss Society of Natural Scientists (Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft SNG). The main reason for founding its own society was that at the annual meetings of the SNG, the representatives of these disciplines had to give lectures on their work in other sections (physics, geology), without arousing any interest there.
The Society had 46 members in its founding year. On 28 April 1917, the constituent meeting took place in Bern with the adoption of the statutes, the election of the board and the determination of the membership fee. At at that time, it was one Franc for ordinary members and two Francs for extraordinary members.
On October 4, 1969, at the General Assembly in St. Gallen, the name of the Society was changed to the Swiss Society for Geophysics, after a Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy had been founded. In 1978, the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary members was abolished. The last change to the current name Swiss Meteorological Society took place on 7 October 1994 in Aarau, after the geophysicists left the Society.