Author: Jeans, James Hopwood [ Waldmeier, Max (1912-2000) ]
Title: Astronomy and Cosmogony
Description: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1929. 2nd Edition, orig.cloth. 27x18cm, x,428,(16)pp, Some buckling to rear cover's cloth surface. A removed label mark to front cover.. 16pp plates.. Rubbed. Spine bump. Some stains to spine. Good. ¶ This is the Swiss astrophysicist Max Waldmeier's copy, with his name rubberstamped to flyleaf and with his neatly pencilled marginal notes throughout text. Includes loosely inserted 7 leaves containing 11 pages of two drafts of a manuscript, in English, handwritten by Waldmeier in ink, titled "Shape and Size of the Universe", with numerous corrections to text.Approximately 5000 words total. ["Waldmeier...one of the leading personalities in solar physics of the 20th century...Waldmeier's systematic observations of various aspects of solar activity, from the photosphere to the corona, spanned several decades and have provided the foundation for much of our current knowledge about the Sun's activity cycle. Much of what we take for granted today can actually be traced back to pioneering work by Waldmeier. Among contributions that date back to 1938the following examples can be given: Waldmeier introduced a widely used evolutionary classification of sunspot groups in nine classes A-J. He determined the relative umbral and penumbral diameters and their solar cycle variations. He discovered bright rings around sunspots and found a decrease in their contrast towards the limb, which indicated a deep-seated origin. He discovered that photospheric faculae have a granular structure and determined the life time of the facular granules. He found that flares and sunspots have nearly identical latitude distributions and that therefore flares have a magnetic origin...." - obituary, Solar News, American Astronomical Society, Vol. 2000, No. 21].

Keywords: Astronomy, Solar Physics, History of Science, Cosmogony, Astrophysics, , , ,