Background
Born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, Jeans was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell and Trinity College, Cambridge, he finished Second Wrangler in the university in the Mathematical Tripos of 1898. He taught at Cambridge, but went to Princeton University in 1904 as a professor of applied mathematics. He returned to Cambridge in 1910.
He made important contributions in many areas of physics, including quantum theory, the theory of radiation and stellar evolution. His analysis of rotating bodies led him to conclude that Laplace's theory that the solar system formed from a single cloud of gas was incorrect, proposing instead that the planets condensed from material drawn out of the sun by a hypothetical catastrophic near-collision with a passing star. This theory is not accepted today.
Jeans, along with Arthur Eddington, is a founder of British cosmology. In 1928 Jeans was the first to conjecture a steady state cosmology based on a hypothesized continuous creation of matter in the universe. This theory was ruled out when the 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background was widely interpreted as the tell-tale signature of the Big Bang.
His scientific reputation is grounded in the monographs The Dynamical Theory of Gases (1904), Theoretical Mechanics (1906), and Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (1908). After retiring in 1929, he wrote a number of books for the lay public, including The Stars in Their Courses (1931), The Universe Around Us, Through Space and Time (1934), The New Background of Science (1933), and The Mysterious Universe. These books made Jeans fairly well known as an expositor of the revolutionary scientific discoveries of his day, especially in relativity and physical cosmology.
In 1939, the Journal of the British Astronomical Association reported that Jeans was going to stand as a candidate for parliament for the Cambridge University constituency. The election, expected to take place in 1939 or 1940 did not take place until 1945, and without his involvement.
He also wrote the book "Physics and Philosophy" (1943) where he explores the different views on reality from two different perspectives: science and philosophy.
Jeans married twice, first to the American poet Charlotte Tiffany Mitchell in 1907, then the Austrian organist and harpsichordist Suzanne Hock (better known as Susi Jeans) in 1935. He died in Dorking, Surrey.
At Merchant Taylors' School there is a James Jeans Academic Scholarship for the candidate in the entrance exams who displays outstanding results across the spectrum of subjects but notably in Mathematics and Sciences.
Read more about this topic: James Hopwood Jeans
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