Unpublished letter, regarding the stability of the Earth's axis of rotation from Henry Hennessy to Sir J W [John William] Lubbock

Description

Hennessy refers to a communication to the Geological Society by Sir John Lubbock, in which he appeals, in support of the possibility of a change in the Earth’s axis, to the influence of two disturbing causes, which appear to have almost entirely escaped the notice of Laplace and Poisson in their investigations on the stability of the earth’s axis of rotation: firstly, that the necessary displacement of the Earth’s interior strata arising from chemical and physical actions during the process of solidification; and secondly, that the friction of the resisting medium in which the earth is supposed to move.

Includes annotations in pencil.

Subject: Earth science

Received 20 November 1851.

Written by Hennessy at Queen's College, Cork [Ireland].

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 6 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'A letter to Sir John W. Lubbock, Bart., F. R. S., On the stability of the Earth’s axis of rotation'.

Reference number

AP/33/16

Earliest possible date

01 November 1851

Physical description

Ink and graphite pencil on paper

Page extent

8 pages

Format

Manuscript