Selection of 19th Century Scientific Verse

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By Listen TheBook Posted on May 31, 2023

In Category - Poetry, Science

Authors: Various In Year : 0

Book Language: English

Audiobook: Selection of 19th Century Scientific Verse

To F. W. F.
Lines Written Under the Conviction that it is Not Wise to Read Mathematics in November After One's Fire is Out
A Problem in Dynamics
In Memory of Edward Wilson: Rigid Body
Valentine by a Telegraph Clerk (Male) to a Telegraph Clerk (Female)
Lectures to Women on Physical Science
To the Chief Musician upon Nabla
To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund
Molecular Evolution
The Mathematician in Love
The Three-foot Rule: a Song about Standards of Measure
To a Missing Member of a Family Group of Terms in an Algebraical Formula
The Infant Metaphysician

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was common for discoveries in branches of science such as botany, astronomy and medicine to be described in book-length treatises in verse. By the end of the 19th century this mode of popularising science was falling from favour as the studies of science and the humanities diverged and study became more specialised.

This small selection of somewhat lighter-hearted verse written by distinguished scientists and mathematicians of the day includes poems by James Clerk Maxwell, William J. Macquorn Rankine and James Joseph Sylvester. (Summary by Ruth Golding)