![]() | Majestic Lights: The Aurora in Science, History, and the Arts Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Special Publications Series .
So wrote Benjamin Franklin (176), L.L.D., F.R.S., in a paper read to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris at the meeting held immediately after Easter in 1779. Franklin is but one famous name among men of science who has puzzled over the aurora since science began. A partial list reads almost like a Who's Who's of science up until our present century, and it includes Aristotle, Seneca, Kepler, Galileo, Gassendi, Halley, Euler, Descartes, Celsius, Cavendish, Dalton, Volta, Gauss, Humbolt, and Angström. To trace the story of the aurora through history is to trace the development of man from a creature of ignorance and superstition, through his renaissance of art and learning, to an analytical disciple of science and technology. But fortunately, man's transformation is not complete: Nature has contrived to clothe all objects of our scientific investigation, from the microsopic to the cosmic, in an aura of beauty and surprise. The aurora is perhaps the most spectacular of nature's contrivances to preserve the soul of the scientist. Robert H. Eather is the author of Majestic Lights: The Aurora in Science, History, and the Arts, published by Wiley. |
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