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Studies of Pallas in the Early Nineteenth Century

Historical Studies in Asteroid Research

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Clifford J. Cunningham

    1. Fort Lauderdale, USA

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  • Continues the story of early asteroid discovery begun in other volumes, moving on from the discovery of Ceres to the discovery of Pallas, the second asteroid discovered
  • Includes the first English translations of multiple primary sources, including two major papers in Latin, one by Regner, the other by Gauss
  • Extensively examines the problem caused by the perturbations of Pallas' high orbital inclination, which led to Gauss' creation of the method of least squares
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. A Disturbing Inclination

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 1-22

  3. The Great Probability Debate

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 23-52

  4. The Gold Medal

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 53-92

  5. The Gauss Anagram

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 93-104

  6. Hypothetical Planets

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 105-114

  7. New Planets: The Transition from 1745 to 1804

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 115-148

  8. The Olbers Letters

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 149-156

  9. The Gauss Letters

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 157-214

  10. The Harding Letters

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 215-233

  11. Herschel’s Asteroids

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 235-269

  12. Scientific Papers

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 271-410

  13. Gauss: The Great Asteroid Treatises

    • Clifford J. Cunningham
    Pages 411-447

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 449-477
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Keywords

About this book

Based on extensive primary sources, many never previously translated into English, this is the definitive account of the discovery of Pallas as it went from being classified as a new planet to reclassification as the second of a previously unknown group of celestial objects. Cunningham, a dedicated scholar of asteroids, includes a large set of newly translated correspondence as well as the many scientific papers about Pallas in addition to sections of Schroeter's 1805 book on the subject.

It was Olbers who discovered Pallas, in 1802, the second of many asteroids that would be officially identified as such. From the Gold Medal offered by the Paris Academy to solve the mystery of Pallas' gravitational perturbations to Gauss' Pallas Anagram, the asteroid remained a lingering mystery to leading thinkers of the time. Representing an intersection of science, mathematics, and philosophy, the puzzle of Pallas occupied the thoughts of an amazing panorama of intellectual giants in Europe in the early 1800s.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fort Lauderdale, USA

    Clifford J. Cunningham

About the author

Clifford J. Cunningham did his Ph.D. work in the history of astronomy at James Cook University and the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, and he is affiliated with the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. He has written or edited 13 books on the history of astronomy, and his papers have been published in many major journals, including Annals of Science, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Culture & Cosmos, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia, The Asian Journal of Physics and The Milton Quarterly. Asteroid (4276) was named Clifford in his honor by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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