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Sir George Darwin (1845–1912) was the second son and fifth child of Charles Darwin. After studying mathematics at Cambridge he read for the Bar, but soon returned to science and to Cambridge, where in 1883 he was appointed Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy. His family home is now the location of Darwin College. His work was concerned primarily with the effect of the sun and moon on tidal forces on Earth, and with the theoretical cosmogony which evolved from practical observation: he formulated the fission theory of the formation of the moon (that the moon was formed from still-molten matter pulled away from the Earth by solar tides). This volume of his collected papers covers periodic orbits and some miscellaneous papers, including two investigating the health statistics of the marriage of first cousins – of interest to a member of a dynasty in which such marriages were common.
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