Nebulous Earth: The Origin of the Solar System and the Core of the Earth from Laplace to Jeffreys

by Stephen G. Brush

The three volumes that together make up A History of Modern Planetary Physics present a survey of the different theories about the origin of the solar system and the nature of the Earth. Fruitful Encounters follows the development of twentieth century theories of the solar system's beginnings. By placing great emphasis on the findings of the Apollo space program and especially its analysis of lunar samples, Professor Brush discusses ideas about the origin of the Moon, culminating in the establishment, in the 1980s, of the giant impact theory.

324 pages, Hardcover

First published July 18, 1996

About the author

A scholar in the history of science, Stephen George Brush earned his BS in physics at Harvard University and his D.Phil. at Oxford University. After a year as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Imperial College London, Brush worked as a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in the area of statistical mechanics from 1959 until 1965. He was a lecturer in Physics at Harvard University from 1965 until 1968, and a historian of science at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1968 until his retirement as Distinguished Professor of the History of Science in 2007.