Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Library Collection - Physical Sciences

Sir George Darwin (1845-1912), the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin, became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. This volume of his collected papers covers tidal friction and cosmogony.

This two-volume work from 1807 details the life and achievements of eighteenth-century British philosopher, theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley. Volume 1 includes his autobiography and important appendices concerning his philosophy, political theory and religion.

First published anonymously in 1805, this book made complex ideas accessible to a non-technical readership and is credited with having influenced the young Michael Faraday. It also provides valuable insights into the gendered world of nineteenth-century education. Volume 1 covers topics including heat, light, gases, metals and carbon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 1876 the South Kensington Museum held a major international exhibition of scientific instruments and equipment, both historical and contemporary. A series of conferences in May allowed many distinguished scientists to discuss the items on display. This two-volume collection of their reports covers physics, mechanics, chemistry, biology, and earth sciences.

Sir James Jeans' well-known treatise covers the topics in electromagnetic theory required by every non-specialist physicist. It provides the relevant mathematical analysis; it is therefore useful to those whose mathematical knowledge is limited, as well as to the more advanced physicists, engineers and applied mathematicians. A large number of examples are given.

Jeans's primary aim with the first edition of his book, originally published in 1904, was to 'develop the theory of gases upon as exact a mathematical basis as possible'.

This volume of lectures by the renowned physicist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, published in 1904, describes the problems inherent in the nineteenth-century concept of ether as a medium for light propagation. These problems led Einstein to formulate the theories of special relativity and the photoelectric effect.

This early nineteenth-century book was written to give popular audiences an introduction to astronomical methods and theories. Its author was remarkable for her mathematical accomplishments at a time when formal training in the subject for women was virtually unknown, and won the praise of her famous contemporary John Herschel.

Sir James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) was one of the most significant physicists of the nineteenth century. His experimental work on heat and energy contributed to the discovery of the first law of thermodynamics. This collection of his papers was published in 1885-1887 by the Physical Society of London.

Sir George Darwin (1845-1912), the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin, became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. This volume of his collected papers covers oceanic tides and lunar disturbances of gravity.

The Memoir and Scientific Correspondence of the Late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Bart., edited by Joseph Larmor, captures the life of one of England's great scientific contributors to the fluid dynamics and optics disciplines. Volume 1 (1907) includes a memoir, culled from family and friends, along with key professional correspondence.

Sir George Darwin (1845-1912), the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin, became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. This volume of his collected papers covers figures of equilibrium of rotating liquid and geophysical investigations.

Sir George Darwin (1845-1912), the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin, became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. This volume of his collected papers covers periodic orbits and other topics including the health statistics of cousin marriages - relevant to his own extended family.

Sir George Darwin (1845-1912), the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin, became Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. This volume, published after his death, includes a biographical memoir by his brother Sir Francis Darwin, and his lectures on George W. Hill's lunar theory.

Henry Cavendish's writings on electricity from 1771 to 1781 were edited by James Clerk Maxwell in 1879, and reveal that discoveries in the field of electricity attributed to other, later scientists had been independently anticipated by Cavendish's experiments.

This is the full text of James Jeans's Rouse Ball Lecture given in 1925 at Cambridge University, and surveys the field of atomic and subatomic physics in the early days of quantum mechanics, with a brief historical perspective on measurement.

The Growth of Physical Science is a detailed but very accessible survey of what began as natural philosophy and culminated in the mid-twentieth century as quantum physical science.

Originally published in 1942, this book discusses an emerging physical science that brought with it a fresh message as to the fundamental nature of the world, and of the possibilities of human free will in particular. The aim of the book is to explore that territory, which forms a borderland between physics and philosophy.

Through Space and Time is based upon the 1933 Christmas Lectures that James Jeans gave at the Royal Institution, London. The book begins its journey with the history, structure and main features of our planet, and ends in the vast expanses of space among the nebulae.

Published in 1934 as a second edition to James Jeans' popular work on the general understanding of the physical universe, The New Background of Science took advantage of a comparatively 'quiescent' period in physical investigation when fundamental theories and findings gained wide acceptance.

This 1897 two-volume edition of Roger Bacon's ground-breaking thirteenth-century encyclopedia of science was the first complete printed edition. Bacon's text appears here in the original Latin, and Bridges provides ample supplementary material in English, including an introduction, analytical table, footnotes, and analysis of each chapter.

Von Humboldt's two-volume study represents a significant and important contribution to the general understanding of the physical world in the nineteenth century. Volume 1 (1846) particularly reflects his desire to understand the 'intimate connection of the general and the special' as it examines celestial and terrestrial phenomena.

James Clerk Maxwell's influential contribution to nineteenth-century physics brought together all the experimental and theoretical advances in the field of electricity and magnetism known at the time. First published in 1873, it contains Maxwell's famous equations on electromagnetic theory. Volume 1 covers electrostatics and electrokinematics.

By the early nineteenth century, it was widely accepted that gravity varied at different points across the Earth's surface, and that the Earth could not be perfectly spherical. This 1825 work documents the groundbreaking experiments of Edward Sabine (1788-1883), the first physicist to produce accurate measurements of this ellipticity.