Abstract
L'Astronomie for September contains a panegyric on Laplace, delivered by Dr. E. Esclangon, director of the Paris Observatory, on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue of the famous astronomer at Beaumont-en-Auge on July 3. Dr. Esclangon observes that Laplace is justly called the French Newton; while basing his work on Newton's law of universal gravitation, he carried the results of this law very much further than any of his predecessors. Special mention is made of his detection of the cause of the lunar acceleration arising from the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. He also made useful researches on the theory of the tides; and his famous nebular hypothesis, though no longer held in its original form, at least as regards the solar system, was a valuable contribution to cosmogony, and formed the starting-point of many other theories.
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Memorial to Laplace. Nature 130, 734 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130734c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130734c0