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The review attempts to elucidate the history of interest and the developing research work done in the field of urban climatology, with special emphasis on temperature.. References are made to the works of certain researchers whose publications have not yet been translated into the English language. The reference list is by no means complete but contains most of the important works in this field. As the population of the industrial world became crowded together into urban communities during the last sixteen decades, so the effect of cities on meteorological features has slowly been recognised as a significant element in a country's climate. Some parameters have come to be dealt with more fully than others, e.g. air pollu-tion, temperature, precipitation and wind field, whereas cloud cover, "degree days",. fog and visibility have had only intermittent attention. An overall view of the hundred or so years since the first steps were taken to study the nature of urban climate indicates that two processes have been in opera-tion. On the one hand scientific advances have introduced new techniques giving an added impetus to research. This has occurred at three major periods; first in the years between 1800 and 1850, then in the 1930's with the introduction of the mobile traverse and the use of more than two fixed stations and finally a rebirth after World War 11 with a fillip in urban research culminating in the works of Sund-borg and Chandler. To illustrate this development three graphs have been drawn (Figures I, 2, and 3), two of which indicate the growth of research into temperatur