From the first time they were dimly sighted through Galileo's telescope to the recent spectacular pictures beamed back by Voyager, Saturn's rings have fascinated generations of observers. The scientific problems associated with them have also attracted the attention of successive generations of theoreticians. James Clerk Maxwell's 1856 Adams Prize Essay, "On the Stability of the Motion of Saturn's Rings," forms the central body of this book and is the work that first established his reputation as one of the greatest mathematical physicists of any generation. It is surrounded by previously unpublished materials written both before and after the essay was completed. The former group consists of sixteen letters - to William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), George Gabriel Stokes, Peter Guthrie Tait, and other friends and colleagues - written while Maxwell was working out the problems and preparing the essay for publication, and they reveal both the sureness of his approach and false starts and errors. The post-essay documents include a review of the work by George Biddell Airy, the Astronomer Royal, and correspondence with the Harvard astronomer George Bond in 1863. Here Maxwell attempts to extend his analysis to include the effects of collisions among the particles of the ring, employing his own newly developed kinetic theory of gases. The editors' introduction provides a historical context for Maxwell's contribution.

The present volume deals with the evolution of Maxwell's overview of atomic and statistical physics and with his work on the kinetic theory of transport phenomena in gases.

This is the first biography in twenty years of James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest scientists of our time and yet a man relatively unknown to the wider public. Approaching science with a freshness unbound by convention or previous expectations, he produced some of the most original scientific thinking of the nineteenth century — and his discoveries went on to shape the twentieth century.

This classic sets forth the fundamentals of thermodynamics and kinetic theory simply enough to be understood by beginners, yet with enough subtlety to appeal to more advanced readers, too.

This book is one of two volumes meant to capture, to the extent practical, the scienti?c legacy of the Cassini-Huygens prime mission, a landmark in the history of planetary exploration. As the most ambitious and interdisciplinary planetary exploration mission ?own to date, it has extended our knowledge of the Saturn system to levels of detail at least an order of magnitude beyond that gained from all previous missions to Saturn. Nestled in the brilliant light of the new and deep understanding of the Saturn planetary system is the shiny nugget that is the spectacularly successful collaboration of individuals, - ganizations and governments in the achievement of Cassini-Huygens. In some ways the pa- nershipsformedandlessonslearnedmaybethemost enduringlegacyofCassini-Huygens.The broad, international coalition that is Cassini-Huygens is now conducting the Cassini Equinox Mission and planning the Cassini Solstice Mission, and in a major expansion of those fruitful efforts, has extended the collaboration to the study of new ?agship missions to both Jupiter and Saturn. Such ventures have and will continue to enrich us all, and evoke a very optimistic vision of the future of international collaboration in planetary exploration. The two volumes in the series Saturn from Cassini-Huygens and Titan from Cassini- Huygens are the direct products of the efforts of over 200 authors and co-authors. Though each book has a different set of three editors, the group of six editors for the two volumes has worked together through every step of the process to ensure that these two volumes are a set.

This book examines James Clerk Maxwell, creator of the electromagnetic theory of light and kinetic theory of gases.

"We owe Clerk Maxwell the precise formulation of the space-time laws of electromagnetic fields. Imagine his own feelings when the partial differential equations he formulated spread in the form of polarized waves with the speed of light! This change in the understanding of the structure of reality is the most profound and fruitful that has come to physics since Newton."--Albert Einstein