Olbers Studies

Stanley L. Jaki

The Name of Wilhelm Olbers (1758-1840), a physician-astronomer from Bremen, suddenly moved into the focus of cosmological awareness in the late 1940s. The first to probe into the reason of this development was the author of these studies, who has established himself as the leading authority on Olbers, not only by his book, The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox. but also by a series of essays on Olbers, most of which have so far appeared only in German, and which are presented in translation here. This volume also publishes for the first time in English the three papers left by Olbers in manuscript: one on the unlimited duration of the cosmos, the second on interplanetary travel, and the third on the Copernican world system.