A Short History of Astronomy by Arthur Berry (best novels for students .TXT) 📕

Chapter X.—For Flamsteed I have used chiefly Baily’s Account of the Revd. John Flamsteed; for Bradley little but the Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence of the Rev. James Bradley (edited by Rigaud), from which the portrait has been taken. My account of Halley’s work is based to a considerable extent on his own writings; there is a good deal of biographical information about him in the books already quoted in connection with Newton and Flamsteed, and there is a useful article on him in the Dictionary of National Biography. I have made a good deal of use in this chapter of Wolf and Delambre, especially in dealing with Continental astronomers; and for special parts of the subject I have used Grant’s History of Physical Astronomy, Todhunter’s History of the Mathematical Theories of Attraction and the Figure of the Earth, and Poynting’s Density of the Earth.

Chapter XI.—Most of the biographical material has been taken from Wolf from articles in various encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries, chiefly French, and from Delambre’s Eloge of Lagrange. The two portraits are taken respectively from Serret’s edition of the Oeuvres de Lagrange and from the Academy’s edition of the Oeuvres Complètes de Laplace. Gautier’s Essai Historique sur le Problème des Trois Corps and Grant’s History of Physical Astronomy have been the books most used for my account of the scientific contributions of the various astronomers dealt with; I have also consulted various modern treatises on gravitational astronomy, especially Tisserand’s Mécanique Céleste, Brown’s Lunar Theory, and to a less extent Cheyne’s Planetary Theory and Airy’s Gravitation. For special points I have used Todhunter’s History, already referred to. Of the original writings I have made a good deal of use of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste as well as of his Système du Monde; I have also consulted a certain number of his other writings and of those of Lagrange and Clairaut; but have made no systematic study of them.

Students who wish to know more about gravitational astronomy but have little knowledge of mathematics should try to read Airy’s Gravitation; Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy and Grant’s History (quoted above) also deal with the subject without employing mathematics, and are tolerably intelligible.

Chapter XII.—The account of Herschel’s career is taken chiefly from Mrs. John Herschel’s Memoir of Caroline Herschel, from Miss A. M. Clerke’s The Herschels and Modern Astronomy, from the Popular History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century by the same author, and from Holden’s Sir William Herschel, his Life and Works. The last three books and the Synopsis and Subject Index to the Writings of Sir William Herschel by Holden & Hastings have been my chief guides to Herschel’s long series of papers; but nearly every thing that I have said about his chief pieces of work is based on his own writings. I have made also some little use of Grant’s History (already quoted), of Wolf, and of Miss Clerke’s System of the Stars.

Students are recommended to read any or all of the first four books named above; the Memoir gives a charming picture of Herschel’s personal life and especially of his relations with his sister. There is also a good critical account of Herschel’s work on sidereal astronomy in Proctor’s Old and New Astronomy.

Chapter XIII.—Except in the articles dealing with gravitational astronomy I have constantly used Miss Clerke’s History (already quoted), a book which students are strongly recommended to read; and in dealing with the first half of the century I have been helped a good deal by Grant’s History. But for the most part the materials for the chapter have been drawn from a great number of sources—consisting very largely of the original writings of the astronomers referred to—which it would be difficult and hardly worth while to enumerate; for the lives of astronomers (especially of English ones), as well as for recent astronomical history generally, I have been much helped by the obituary notices and the reports on the progress of astronomy which appear annually in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

I add the names of a few books which deal with special parts of modern astronomy in a non-technical way:—

The Sun, C. A. Young; The Sun, R. A. Proctor; The Story of the Sun, R. S. Ball; The Sun’s Place in Nature, J. N. Lockyer.

The Moon, E. Neison; The Moon, T. G. Elger.

Saturn and its System, R. A. Proctor.

Mars, Percival Lowell.

The World of Comets, A. Guillemin (a well-illustrated but uncritical book, now rather out of date); Remarkable Comets, W. T. Lynn (a very small book full of useful information); The Great Meteoritic Shower of November, W. F. Denning.

The Tides and Kindred Phenomena in the Solar System, G. H. Darwin.

Remarkable Eclipses, W. T. Lynn (of the same character as his book on Comets.)

The System of the Stars, A. M. Clerke.

Spectrum Analysis, H. Schellen; Spectrum Analysis, H. E. Roscoe.