Collected Papers in Physics and Engineering

Abstract

WHEN Sir Joseph Larmor edited the scientific papers of Lord Kelvin and Prof. Fitzgerald he did work which nobody else could have done so perfectly; his time, however valuable, was spent to advantage. The editing of these papers of Lord Kelvin's brother might have been undertaken by many others, but now that the excellent result is before us we cannot regret it, and we must confess that we did not expect to find in the editor such a perfect sympathy with James Thomson's methods of study. He shares with Prof. Thomson's son the honour and credit of this publication. The book begins with about a hundred pages of biography and comment upon Thomson's works—excellent reading. Then we have 153 pages of papers relating to fluid motion, dating from 1852 to the Bakerian lecture of 1892; nearly eighty pages on congelation and liquefaction from 1849 to 1888; forty pages on the continuity of states in matter from 1869 to 1873; seventy pages on dynamics and elasticity from 1848 to 1887; and about eighty pages on geological and miscellaneous subjects from 1848 to 1892.

Collected Papers in Physics and Engineering.

Prof. James Thomson, F.R.S. Selected and arranged with unpublished material and brief, annotations by Sir Joseph Larmor, Sec. R.S., and James Thomson. Pp. civ + 484. (Cambridge: University Press, 1912.) Price 15s. net.)