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Darwin Correspondence Project

To G. H. Darwin   23 July 1881

[Down.]

July 23rd 1881

In Kosmos just published (p 223) your abstract in Nature has been translated into German; & the Editor appends a note (referring to some former article in Kosmos) that, though Kant overlooked, yet that R. Mayer of Heilbronn thoroughily investigated the bearing of “Reibung” on the nebular hypothesis.—1

C.D.

Thank all the stars in Heaven, Collier has finished his picture of me & is gone..—2 He is very nice.

I am tired & cannot tell you any news.

Footnotes

Reibung: friction (German). An abstract of George’s paper ‘On the tidal friction of a planet attended by several satellites, and on the evolution of the solar system’ (G. H. Darwin 1881a) was published in Nature, 24 February 1881, pp. 389–90. A German translation of the abstract was published in Kosmos 9 (1881): 220–3. Ernst Krause’s note on p. 223 reads (in English translation): Laplace overlooked the slowing effect of tidal friction, despite the fact that Kant had discussed it in detail long before he did. More recently, Robert Mayer of Heilbronn made it the subject of in-depth investigations. See Kosmos 7: 379. (Immanuel Kant and Pierre Simon Laplace.) The reference was to a German translation of the summary of G. H. Darwin 1879 (another work on tides) published in Nature, 8 January 1880, pp. 235–7 (Kosmos 7 (1880): 379–83); in his introduction, Krause discussed the work of Kant and Mayer on the same subject.

Bibliography

Darwin, George Howard. 1879b. On the secular changes in the elements of the orbit of a satellite revolving about a tidally distorted planet. [Read 18 December 1879.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 171 (1880): 713–891.

Darwin, George Howard. 1881a. On the tidal friction of a planet attended by several satellites, and on the evolution of the solar system. [Read 20 January 1881.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 172: 491–535.

Summary

GHD’s abstract from Nature [24 (1881): 231] has been published in Kosmos.

John Collier has finished his portrait of CD.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13252
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
George Howard Darwin
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 210.1: 105
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13252,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13252.xml

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