Bøger i Cambridge Library Collection - Physical Sciences serien

By the early nineteenth century, meteorologists were equipped with plenty of useful devices: barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and any number of variations thereon. But the nature of these instruments was not wholly understood. While it was possible to take accurate measurements with a barometer, what physical process made the mercury move? What exactly is atmospheric pressure? And how can one measure sunlight? Ranging from wild theories of gravity-resistant air particles to the latest experiments in altitude, chemist and physicist John Frederic Daniell (1790-1845) presents his answers in this collection of essays. First published in 1823, this enlarged second edition of 1827 includes his work on the climate of London, the effect of atmospheric conditions on human health, and suggested improvements for the design of a new hygrometer. Daniell later became the first professor of chemistry at King's College, London, and foreign secretary of the Royal Society.

Professor of natural philosophy for the Royal Institution between 1853 and 1887, the physicist John Tyndall (1820-93) passionately sought to share scientific understanding with the Victorian public. Reissued here is the collected research he contributed to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and other journals. Published in 1872, it complements Tyndall's Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion (1863), which is also reissued in this series. Here each memoir is preceded by a short summary, explaining what he discovered and his reasons for embarking on the investigations in question. Accompanying the detailed descriptions of experimental methods are illustrations of the scientific apparatus used. Tyndall also shows how his work built upon previous research, acknowledging the insights of distinguished scientists such as William Herschel and Macedonio Melloni. In particular, he discusses at length his academic debates with Heinrich Gustav Magnus.

William Thomson, Baron Kelvin (1824-1907), born with a great talent for mathematics and physics, was educated at Glasgow and Cambridge. While only in his twenties, he was appointed to the University of Glasgow's Chair in Natural Philosophy, which he was to hold for over fifty years. He is best known for lending his name to the Kelvin unit of measurement for temperature, after his development of an absolute scale of temperature. This book is a corrected 1884 edition of Kelvin's 1872 collection of papers on electrostatics and magnetism. It includes all his work on these subjects previously published as articles in journals including the Cambridge Mathematical Journal and the Transactions of the Royal Society. Kelvin also wrote several new items to fill gaps in this collection, so that its coverage of the state of electromagnetic research in the late nineteenth century is comprehensive.

This short but distinctive paper was published in 1835 by Charles Daubeny (1795-1867), who began his career as a physician but soon found his passion to be volcanos. At this time, Daubeny held chairs in chemistry and botany at Oxford. He had made many field trips to European volcanic regions between 1819 and 1825, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822, and in 1826 published the first edition of his famous Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos, of which a later version also appears in this series. Here Daubeny describes a winter trip to the Apulia (Puglia) region in the south-east of Italy, rarely described by travel writers of his time, to visit Lake Amsanctus, famously mentioned by Virgil, and the extinct volcano Mount Vultur. Although Daubeny's overall focus is scientific, his account also includes lively descriptions of classical remains and rural society in southern Italy.

In this first biography of the physicist Sir James Prescott Joule (1818-1889), his friend and collaborator Osborne Reynolds (1842-1912), Professor of Engineering at Owens College, Manchester, is keen to show how Joule, the son of a prosperous Salford brewer, was an 'ordinary' boy, enjoying regular walking trips to Snowdon, the Peaks and the Lakes; at the same time, he was greatly influenced by two years of tuition by John Dalton. His later experiments, observations and published papers are discussed and quoted at length. Reynolds stresses the influence Joule's work on heat and thermodynamics had on his contemporaries, but also that this 'amateur' scientist was often so far ahead of his time that his work was misunderstood or dismissed. Since publication of this book in 1892, only one other biography of Joule has appeared, and so it remains a vital source of first-hand information on his life and work.

The Royal Society has been dedicated to scientific inquiry since the seventeenth century. In 1811, Thomas Thomson (1773-1852), a pioneering chemistry teacher who was elected a fellow of the society in the same year, undertook the project of writing a history of the organisation's illustrious past. In this book, published in 1812, Thomson explains how the group began in 1645, initiated by men who met once a week to discuss natural philosophy and mathematics. They were eventually granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1662. The society grew in number and prestige, and began publishing research in its Philosophical Transactions in 1665. Thomson's work focuses particularly on the development of the group's many scientific areas of interest and summarises various papers it published. He also includes a full list of the fellowship, from the society's foundation to 1812, and a copy of the society's original charter.

These Memorials of Andrew Crosse (1784-1855), published by his wife after his death, include his experiments, and some of his poetry and prose. After graduating from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1805 (described in this volume as 'a perfect hell on earth'), he returned to his family's manor house where he studied electricity, chemistry, and mineralogy, and installed a mile and a quarter of insulated copper wire in his grounds. A controversial figure, Crosse was thorough in his approach to his scientific work, if somewhat unusual in his practice. In 1836 he famously conducted a series of experiments on electro-crystallization in which he noted an appearance of life forms, named Acarus, seemingly created in the metallic solutions which should have been destructive to organic life. This book recounts these experiments, and the public sensation that they gave rise to by their apparent suggestion of life created by electricity.

This is an account of the career of James Dinwiddie (1746-1815). First published in 1868 by Dinwiddie's grandson William Jardine Proudfoot, the work is based on Dinwiddie's own autobiographical notes, travel logbook and personal correspondence. The biography traces Dinwiddie's career from the scientific lectures he gave from 1781 and the journal series Queries and Hints, which he began in 1779, to his visit to the Chinese imperial court as official astronomer in Lord Macartney's mission (1792-1794); his residence in Beijing and Canton; and his move to India, where he was appointed Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at the College of Fort William, Bengal. Dinwiddie's career was marked by passionate commitment to the dissemination of scientific knowledge - his travels, lectures and publications were undertaken for this cause. His life is a fascinating account of a polymathic mind which will fascinate and entertain a modern-day readership.

Published posthumously in 1888, this treatise by the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge explores and explains the fundamental principles and laws that are the basis of elementary physics. Maxwell was at the forefront of physics and mathematics during the nineteenth century and his pioneering work brought together existing ideas to give 'a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field'. This work inspired not only the applications of electromagnetic waves like fibre optics but also Einstein's theory of relativity. The text explains many of Newton's laws and the unifying concepts that govern a body and its motion. The increment in the complexity of topics allows one to build a solid understanding of the accepted laws of mathematical physics that explain topics like force, work, energy and the centre mass point of a material system. This logical guide and instruction is as timeless as the laws of physics that it explains.

First published in 1873, this co-authored biography of the Scottish physicist, Alpine explorer, and university leader James David Forbes (1809-1868) includes extracts from Forbes' letters. John Campbell Shairp, Forbes' successor as principal of the United College of the University of St Andrews, writes of Forbes' personal, family, and professional life, including his years at St Andrews. Forbes' student and his successor in the Natural Philosophy chair at the University of Edinburgh, Peter Guthrie Tait, himself an accomplished mathematical physicist who co-wrote, with Lord Kelvin, Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), discusses Forbes' scientific achievements and contributions. A. Adams-Reilly, a celebrated Irish mountaineer, cartographer, and friend of Forbes, writes of the latter's Alpine travels and his work and interest in glaciers. In Shairp's words, in addition to all of his academic accomplishments, Forbes was also Britain's 'father of Alpine adventure'.

The fame of Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871), a brilliant mathematician and logician, has been eclipsed by that of his son, the celebrated ceramicist William De Morgan. However, as readers of his Memoir will discover, De Morgan senior enjoyed an equally distinguished, if turbulent, career. Collated by his wife, and published in 1882, nine years after his death, the Memoir of Augustus de Morgan chronicles the varied life of an under-appreciated genius. Biographical narrative is interleaved with his own correspondence, revealing a humorous and warm personality as well as an exceptional intellect. As the Pall Mall Gazette told its readers, 'quaint and original to the last, every word of De Morgan's correspondence is well worth reading'. Although rich in detail about his work and publications, Sophia Elizabeth's affectionate account of her husband is also sympathetic and witty, making it an ideal introduction to one of Britain's greatest minds.

In 1867, Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) and Peter Guthrie Tate revolutionised physics with the publication of their Treatise on Natural Philosophy, in which they demonstrated the centrality of energy conservation to systems of dynamic movement. Popularly known as 'T&T' for its authors' initials, the Treatise became the standard textbook on natural philosophy, introducing generations of mathematicians to the 'new energy-based dynamics'. In Elements of Natural Philosophy (1873), they distil the portions of the Treatise not requiring higher calculus into a primer suitable for use in university courses. The first half covers the basic principles of kinematics and dynamics, including the motion of points, lines, and volumes, while the second half concerns questions of 'abstract dynamics', including particle attraction. The result of one of the most important collaborations in modern physics, this book remains a thorough introduction to the major principles of Thomson and Tait's larger work.

Famed for his seminal work in the development of atomic theory, John Dalton (1766-1844) was a chemist and natural philosopher who served for years as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the New College, Manchester. Dalton was born into a Quaker family in the Lake District; his early interest in weather was inspired by a local instrument-maker and meteorologist. He began keeping a meteorological diary in 1787, and this 1793 book is one of his earliest publications. It contains not only meteorological observations but also speculations about their causes. Beginning with a description of the instruments needed to undertake such investigations, Dalton considers a variety of natural phenomena, finishing by offering various theories on the causes of the Aurora Borealis. This book also contains many of the ideas that would go on to be developed in his future research and publications, for which he is better known.

These Personal Recollections contain the memoirs and a selection of the correspondence of the nineteenth-century polymath Mary Somerville (1780-1872). The book was first published in 1873, a year after Mary's death, by her daughter Martha, who wrote brief introductions to the text. Mary Somerville is best known for her pioneering scientific publications which include her translation of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste (1831: also resissued in this series); On the Connection of the Physical Sciences (1834); Physical Geography (1848); and On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1869). Through these publications, Somerville made a lasting contribution to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Somerville's correspondence deals primarily with her public life, while the memoirs offer insight into her private sphere: the discouragement she faced in pursuit of learning; her passion for women's education and suffrage; family life; and personal faith. Her story is compelling, and her experiences may resonate with many women today.

Sir Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was a New Zealand-born physicist who has become known as the 'father of nuclear physics' for his discovery of the so-called planetary structure of atoms. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. His co-authors, James Chadwick and Charles D. Ellis also made significant discoveries in the field of nuclear physics, with Chadwick discovering the neutron particle in 1932. Research in nuclear physics in the 1930s had become focused on investigating the natures of alpha, beta and gamma radiation and their effects on matter and atomic structure. This volume provides a definitive account of the state of research into these types of radiation in 1930, explaining the theory and process behind inferring the structure of the atom and the structure of the nucleus. The text of this volume is taken from a 1951 reissue of the 1930 edition.

Originating from the Rede Lecture delivered at the University of Cambridge in November 1930, this book is based upon the conviction that the teachings and findings of astronomy and physical science are destined to produce an immense change on our outlook on the universe as a whole, and on views about the significance of human life. The author contends that the questions at issue are ultimately one for philosophical discussion, but that before philosophers can speak, science should present ascertained facts and provisional hypotheses. The book is therefore written with these thoughts in mind while broadly presenting the fundamental physical ideas and findings relevant for a wider philosophical inquiry.

Mary Somerville (1780-1872) would have been a remarkable woman in any age, but as an acknowledged leading mathematician and astronomer at a time when the education of most women was extremely restricted, her achievement was extraordinary. Laplace famously told her that 'There have been only three women who have understood me. These are yourself, Mrs Somerville, Caroline Herschel and a Mrs Greig of whom I know nothing.' Mary Somerville was in fact Mrs Greig. After (as she herself said) translating Laplace's work 'from algebra into common language', she wrote On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834). Her intention was to demonstrate the remarkable tendency of modern scientific discoveries 'to simplify the laws of nature, and to unite detached branches by general principles.' This and her next book, the two-volume Physical Geography, also reissued in this series, were enormously influential both within the scientific community and beyond.

Astronomer and philosopher J. F. W. Herschel's A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, originally published in 1830, can be regarded as the first modern work on the philosophy of science. In this book, Herschel carefully sets out what he regards as the principles and methods of scientific investigation, both at a theoretical level and at the level of experiment or observation. He describes nature as being governed by laws which are difficult to discern by mere observation and so deduces that theoretical science requires analogical reasoning. In the Discourses, written as the first in a series called Cabinet Cyclopaedia, he covers a wide range of methodological, scientific and philosophical subjects that include discussions of contemporary astronomy, atomism and chemistry. His writing on light is heavily influenced by Newton. Herschel also ponders the differences between human beings and animals and the relationship between religious faith and scientific enquiry.

This 1893 publication is a central text in the work of the Nobel prize winning physicist Sir Joseph John Thomson (1858-1940). Intended as an extension of James Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, it documents the important shift in Thomson's thinking towards the model of the atomic electric field, a theory that would eventually lead to his discovery of the electron. In Chapter 1, Thomson documents his experiments with Faraday tubes, using them to physically demonstrate a 'molecular theory of electricity'. Chapter 2 considers the discharge of electricity through gases, Chapter 3 theories of electrostatics, and Chapters 4-6 are primarily concerned with alternating currents. In addition to providing crucial insight into Thomson's evolving theory of the atom, Recent Researches underscores his commitment to experimental physics, which offers 'all the advantages in vividness which arise from concrete qualities rather than abstract symbols'.

By the late eighteenth century, scientists had discovered certain types of gas, such as 'fixed air' (carbon dioxide), but their composition was little understood. This three-volume collection presents groundbreaking investigations into gases. Volume 1 (second edition, 1775) includes a history of the field, with accounts of Priestley's early experiments.

In the 1820s and 1830s, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) undertook crucial work in electromagnetism which forms the basis of modern electromagnetic technology. In the first of this three-volume collection of his papers, published between 1839 and 1855, he describes his early experiments and their frustrating pitfalls.

Charles Hutton (1737-1823) was professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy when he published this two-volume encyclopaedia in 1795-6. He aimed to cover contemporary mathematics and natural philosophy, as well as engineering. The excellent historical and biographical articles make the work a valuable record of eighteenth-century science.

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was a hugely influential chemist, inventor, and public lecturer who is recognised as one of the first professional scientists. This 1836 memoir by his brother John Davy makes use of family and personal papers to convey Sir Humphry's character as well as his scientific achievements.

John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh (1842-1919), was an English physicist best known as the co-discoverer of the element argon. These highly influential volumes, first published between 1877 and 1878, contain Rayleigh's classic account of acoustics, which provided the foundations of modern acoustic theory.

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was an influential chemist, inventor, and public lecturer recognised as one of the first professional scientists. These volumes, first published in 1831, contain his official biography, providing fascinating insights into his life and scientific studies. Volume 1 describes his life and work until 1812.

William Thomson, Baron Kelvin (1824-1907), was one of the most important Victorian scientists. These volumes collect together Kelvin's lectures for a wider audience. Volume 1 includes talks about the constitution of matter and basic topics in physics such as light, heat, electricity and gravity.

John Playfair (1748-1819) was a Scottish mathematician and geologist best known for his defence of James Hutton's geological theories. This 1822 four-volume collection includes his most significant works on geological and mathematical theory, scientific biographies and reviews of English and French publications.

This collection brings together in six volumes the published articles of the eminent mathematical physicist and engineer William Thomson, first Baron Kelvin (1824-1907). Topics covered include heat, electricity, magnetism and electrotelegraphy, hydrodynamics, tidal theory and navigation.

This history of the Royal Society from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to 1830 was originally published in 1848. Volume 1 covers the period to 1755, describing the society's origins and key moments in its development. It also contains biographies of presidents including Samuel Pepys and Isaac Newton.

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) was a Scottish physicist of international reputation. This classic biography of Sir Isaac Newton, first published in 1855, was the result of over twenty years' research, using previously unknown correspondence. Brewster's own scientific interests, particularly in optics, gave him the ability to communicate Newton's work.