Sir George Darwin (1845-1912) was the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin. After studying mathematics at Cambridge he read for the Bar, but soon returned to science and to Cambridge, where in 1883 he was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy. His family home is now the location of Darwin College. His work was concerned primarily with the effect of the sun and moon on tidal forces on Earth, and with the theoretical cosmogony which evolved from practical observation: he formulated the fission theory of the formation of the moon (that the moon was formed from still-molten matter pulled away from the Earth by solar tides). This volume of his collected papers covers periodic orbits and some miscellaneous papers, including two investigating the health statistics of the marriage of first cousins - of interest to a member of a dynasty in which such marriages were common.
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Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)
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978-0-511-70350-8 (9780511703508)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Preface; Part I. Periodic orbits: 1. Periodic orbits; 2. On certain discontinuities connected with periodic orbits; 3. On certain families of periodic orbits; Part II. The Tides: 4. The tides; Part III. Miscellaneous Papers in Chronological Order: 5. On some proposed forms of slide-rule; 6. An application of Peaucellier's cell; 7. The mechanical description of equipotential lines; 8. On a mechanical representation of the second elliptic integral; 9. On maps of the world; 10. A geometric puzzle; 11. A geometric illustration of the potential of a distant centre of force; 12. On graphical interpolation and integration; 13. On a theorem in spherical harmonic analysis; 14. On fallible measures of variable quantities, and on the treatment of meteorological observations; 15. On the horizontal thrust of a mass of sand; 16. On the formation of ripple-mark in sand; 17. Note on Mr Davison's paper on the straining of the Earth's crust in cooling; 18. On the mechanical conditions of a swarm of meteorites, and on theories of cosmogony; 19. On the perturbation of a comet in the neighbourhood of a planet; 20. The Eulerian notation of the Earth's axis; 21. The analogy between Lesage's theory of gravitation and the repulsion of light; Part IV. Papers on Tides: 22. The tidal observations of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907; 23. On a mistake in the instructions for the use of a certain apparatus in tidal reductions; 24. Geological time; 25. Presentation of the Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society to M. Henri Poincaré; 26. Cosmical evolution; Appendix: 27. Marriages between first cousins in England and their effects; 28. Note on the marriages of first cousins; Index.
