Gavin Edmund Pretor-Pinney is a British author, known for his books The Cloudspotter's Guide and The Wavewatcher's Companion.
Pretor-Pinney is son of Anthony Robert Edmund Pretor-Pinney and Laura Uppercu, daughter of George Winthrop Haight, of Manhattan, observer for the American Bar Association and a specialist in international law. The Pretor-Pinney family were landowners at Somerton, Somerset since the 1800s, descendants of the sugar merchant and Mayor of Bristol Charles Pinney; Anthony Pretor-Pinney had Somerton Erleigh, named for the family's former house on a different part of the estate, built in 1972âÂÂ3.
Pretor-Pinney attended Westminster School, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
In 1991, Tom Hodgkinson came up with the idea for a magazine called The Idler, immediately recruiting his friend and neighbour, Pretor-Pinney, to help him develop the concept; they co-founded the magazine, publishing its first issue in 1993.
In 2004, Pretor-Pinney was asked to speak at a conference, where he gave a talk titled "Inaugural Lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society"; so many people showed joy and interest in the concept that, in 2005, he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society.