Fields of Reading 03d

Sir James Jeans (1877-1946) was a British physicist and astronomer. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he lectured there and was a professor of applied mathematics at Princeton University from 1905 to 1909. He later did research at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Jeans won many honors for his work and wrote a number of scholarly and popular scientific books. The following selection is from The Stars in Their Courses (1931), a written version of what began as a series of radio talks for an audience assumed to have no special knowledge of science.