Problems of Cosmology and Stellar Dynamics

Book excerpt: Problems of Cosmogony and Stellar Dynamics is a theoretical prelude to Jeans's later and more mature work on the subject, Astronomy and Cosmogony. The impetus for publishing his theories on the behaviour of rotating masses, and on general dynamical theory, was the 1917 Adams Prize on the 'rotating and gravitating fluid mass'. Jeans won the prize with the core text of this volume. Enlarging on that work, and utilising the burgeoning results of astronomy, as well as the author's bolder theoretical conjectures, this book became a solid foundation for substantial progress in cosmology.