The Origin of the Solar System in The Journal of The Franklin Institute, Vol. 212, No. 2, pp. 135-147 August, 1931

Lancaster: The Franklin Institute, 1931. 1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS OF SIR JAMES HOPWOOD JEANS' 1931 LECTURE "THE ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM" UPON WINNING THE FRANKLIN MEDAL OF THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE. Jeans and Arthur Eddington are considered the founders of British cosmology.

Sir James Hopwood Jeans was an English physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who made significant contributions in many areas of physics, stellar evolution, quantum theory, and the theory of radiation. Jeans was awarded the Franklin Medal based upon his contributions to cosmology, particularly those of the late 1920s. As early as 1923, Jeans wrote "Astronomy does not know whether or not life is important in the scheme of nature, but she begins to whisper that life must necessarily be somewhat rare" (Jeans, 1923, 30).

By the late 1920s, Jeans's view had solidified. "The numbers varied somewhat, but always present [in his work] was the basic scenario that the stars are sparsely scattered in space, close encounters exceedingly rare, and the conditions for life very exacting" (Jeans 1930, 335). "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 1928 book Astronomy and Cosmology [Jeans] 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" (Wikipedia). CONDITION: Lancaster, PA: The Franklin Institute. Large 8vo. Complete issue. [8], 268, [2]. Figures, plates, and photographs throughout. Original wraps, very slight toning at the spine, bright and clean inside and out. Near fine.