The Emergence of Geophysics in Nineteenth Century Britain.

Details The Emergence of Geophysics in Nineteenth Century Britain. The Emergence of Geophysics in Nineteenth Century Britain.

Jan 1990

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1990phdt........66k&link_type=abstract

Thesis (PH.D.)--PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, 1990.Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3202.

Mathematics

Mathematical Physics

Scientific paper

Three central interdisciplinary problems were crucial to the coalescence of a nascent community of scientists in Victorian Britain that was concerned specifically with questions about the nature and history of the earth as a physical body. These were (1) the structure of the earth and the thickness of its crust, (2) the age of the earth, and (3) the astronomical and physical causes of glacial epochs, or ice ages. This thesis concentrates on a particular interdisciplinary approach to these problems that explicitly sought to apply the techniques and methods of mathematical physics to the concerns of geology. The result was a new strand of applied mathematics and physics of the earth that was denominated 'physical geology' or 'terrestrial physics,' and eventually 'geophysics.' The thesis analyzes the mathematical foundations of this new strand and its evolving relationship with the parent disciplines, culminating in the transformation of the new field in the hands of Sir George Darwin, son of Charles, through his own brand of applied mathematics. The central historiographical aim is to analyze the dynamics of controversy and its role in the formation of the new discipline of geophysics. The origins of the field are traced to the researches of William Hopkins (c. 1840) on the phenomenon of precession to determine the thickness of the earth's crust. These are followed through to the 1860s research program of William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) in terrestrial physics, wherein various concerns were tied together, notably the effective tidal rigidity of the earth and arguments to limit the earth's age, especially on the basis of tidal retardation. George Darwin's mathematical program, sparked by efforts to use polar wandering to explain glacial epochs, elaborated an entire theory of tidal evolution that explained the earth's physical history, including the obliquity of the ecliptic and the fissipartition of the moon. By the mid-1880s Darwin had bound together all three of the interdisciplinary problems in a sophisticated approach that transformed the nascent field into modern geophysics, albeit with a distinctly British and astronomical flavor.

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