‎Jeans (James Hopwood)‎
‎The Stability of a Spherical Nebula , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, series A, Volume 199, pages 1-53, A312, Communicated by Professor G.H. Darwin, F.R.S., Received June 13, Read June 20, 1901, Revised February 28, 1902‎

‎Dulau and Co, London , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Malicorne sur Sarthe, 72, Pays de la Loire, France 1902 Book condition, Etat : Bon paperback, editor's original printed green wrappers, plastified In-4 1 vol. - 53 pages‎

Reference : 100580

‎3 text-figures in black 1st edition, 1902 "Contents, Chapitres : Introduction - 1. The criterion of stability : The principal vibrations of a spherical nebula - Discussion of the frequency equation - An isothermal nebula - The general case of a nebula extending to infinity - Exchange of stabilities - Recapitulation and discussion of results - 2. Evaluation of the stability function : General case of a nebula at rest - A slowly rotating nebula - Influence of viscosity - A nebula in process of cooling - 3. Summary and discussion of results - 4. The unsymmetrical configurations of a nebula - A nebula in isothermal-adiabatic equilibrium - The evolution of nebula - Conclusion - Sir James Hopwood Jeans, 11 September 1877 16 September 1946, was an English physicist, astronomer and mathematician. - Jeans was elected Fellow of Trinity College in October 1901, and taught at Cambridge, but went to Princeton University in 1904 as a professor of applied mathematics. He returned to Cambridge in 1910. He made important contributions in many areas of physics, including quantum theory, the theory of radiation and stellar evolution. His analysis of rotating bodies led him to conclude that Pierre-Simon Laplace's theory that the solar system formed from a single cloud of gas was incorrect, proposing instead that the planets condensed from material drawn out of the sun by a hypothetical catastrophic near-collision with a passing star. This theory is not accepted today. Jeans, along with Arthur Eddington, is a founder of British cosmology. In 1928, Jeans was the first to conjecture a steady state cosmology based on a hypothesized continuous creation of matter in the universe. In his book Astronomy and Cosmology (1928) he stated: ""The type of conjecture which presents itself, somewhat insistently, is that the centers of the nebulae are of the nature 'singular points' at which matter is poured into our universe from some other, and entirely extraneous spatial dimension, so that, to a denizen of our universe, they appear as points at which matter is being continually created."" This theory fell out of favour when the 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background was widely interpreted as the tell-tale signature of the Big Bang. - In stellar physics, the Jeans instability causes the collapse of interstellar gas clouds and subsequent star formation, named after James Jeans. It occurs when the internal gas pressure is not strong enough to prevent gravitational collapse of a region filled with matter. For stability, the cloud must be in hydrostatic equilibrium, which in case of a spherical cloud. The equilibrium is stable if small perturbations are damped and unstable if they are amplified. In general, the cloud is unstable if it is either very massive at a given temperature or very cool at a given mass; under these circumstances, the gas pressure cannot overcome gravity, and the cloud will collapse. - Jeans' length is the critical radius of a cloud (typically a cloud of interstellar molecular gas and dust) where thermal energy, which causes the cloud to expand, is counteracted by gravity, which causes the cloud to collapse. It is named after the British astronomer Sir James Jeans, who concerned himself with the stability of spherical nebulae in the early 1900s. (our copy according to Wikipedia)." "Near fine condition, the wrappers are fine but the former owner had PLASTIFIED the booklet, outside until the left border of the first page and last page, else fine copy, few foxings on the wrappers, inside is fine, clean and bright, no markings, it remains a near fine copy of this rather rare book from J.H. Jeans - Offprint, presentation copy, paginated 1 to 53, with specific original wrappers, it's not a copy extracted from a larger volume. This early work is not directly mentioned in the D.S.B. even if : ""As early as 1902-1903 Jeans occupated himself with the forms and stability of rotating liquid masses, inspired in this by the work of George Darwin. Poincaré had traced the evolution of a rotating incompressible fluid mass slowly contracting gravitationally through ellipsoidal figures to a pear-shaped figure but was unable to decide the stability of the latter. By an incomplete argument Darwin concluded that the pear-shaped figure was stable, but, in 1905n Lyapunov demonstrated the opposite. Jeans's earliest work in this field had been to compute the equilibrium figures of rotating liquid cylinders"" (DSB, volume 7-8, page 85). First important book published by Jeans was in 1904, ""The Dynamical Theory of Gases"". The paper was communicated by the Astronomer George Darwin, 1845-1912, the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin."‎