Symposium on applications of mathematics in the earth‐sciences: Preface

Abstract

The group of addresses given at the joint session of Sections A and E of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Columbus, Ohio, in December 1939 is a happy outcome of the joint session of these sections at the Richmond meeting in December 1938. It tends to further a very desirable rapprochement between geophysicists and mathematicians, for the group represents informed men from both these fields and begins the important task of bringing to each field the knowledge or some suggestions of the contributions which the other field may make.Mr. Lambert sketches the essentials in the development of gravitational geophysics in Great Britain, beginning with Newton in 1687. He discusses not so much the mathematical methods as the men and their results, although the former would have been of interest. It is an absorbing study to note the stumbling and disparate attempts to investigate the density of the Earth, the gravitation‐constant, the elastic properties of the Earth, and the figure of the Earth including the related topics of the measurement of a degree of latitude, the determination at the geoid, and the variation in gravity. One may well contrast this slow development with the possibilities of the present day, where there is an increasing amount of cooperation, not merely between the various divisions in the field of geophysics but between geophysics and mathematics.