This book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of ideas about the sun and the stars, from antiquity to modern times. Two theoretical astrophysicists who have been active in the field since the early 1960s tell the story in fluent prose. About half of the book covers most of the theoretical research done from 1940 to the close of the twentieth century, a large body of work that has to date been little explored by historians.

Table of Contents

• List of Figures
• Preface
• Chapter 1. The Age of Myths and Speculations
• 1.1 Ancient Egypt and the Middle East
• 1.2 Ionia: The Eastern Greek School
• 1.3 Southern Italy: The Western Greek School
• 1.4 The Athenian Period
• 1.5 The Alexandrian Period
• 1.6 From the Dark Age to the Renaissance
• 1.7 The Emergence of Modern Astronomy
• Chapter 2. Three Centuries of Optical Discoveries: 1610–1910
• 2.1 Distances to the Sun and the Stars
• 2.2 The Beginnings of Spectroscopy
• 2.3 The Sun as a Star
• 2.4 Solar Activity and Rotation
• 2.5 Intrinsic Properties of Stars
• 2.6 Binary Stars and Stellar Masses
• 2.7 Variable and Unusual Stars
• 2.8 The Rise of Astrophysics
• Chapter 3. The Time of Pioneers: 1840–1910
• 3.1 The Puzzle of the Sun's Energy
• 3.2 The First Solar Models
• 3.3 The Pulsation Theory of Variable Stars (I)
• 3.4 The Double-Star Problem
• 3.5 Early Views of Stellar Evolution
• 3.6 Outline of Solar Activity and Rotation
• 3.7 Retrospect: The Nineteenth-Century Advances
• Chapter 4. The Formative Years: 1910–1940
• 4.1 The Beginnings of Quantitative Astrophysics
• 4.2 The Stellar-Energy Problem
• 4.3 The Internal Structure of Stars
• 4.4 Pre-1938 Views of Stellar Evolution
• 4.5 White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars
• 4.6 The Pulsation Theory of Variable Stars (II)
• 4.7 The Early Studies of Stellar Rotation
• 4.8 Solar and Stellar Hydrodynamics
• Chapter 5. The Golden Age: 1940–1970
• 5.1 Nuclear Reactions and Energy Production in Stars
• 5.2 Calculation of Stellar Structure
• 5.3 A Brief Survey of Stellar Evolution
• 5.4 Postgiant Evolution and Stellar Remnants
• 5.5 Evolution of Close Binary Stars
• 5.6 The Pulsation Theory of Variable Stars (III)
• 5.7 Stellar Rotation and Magnetic Fields
• 5.8 The Maturing of Solar Physics
• Chapter 6. The Era of Specialization: 1970–
• 6.1 Single, Double, and Multiple Stars
• 6.2 Early-Type Stars
• 6.3 The Sun
• 6.4 Late-Type Stars
• 6.5 The Pulsation Theory of Variable Stars (IV)
• 6.6 Final Stages of Stellar Evolution
• Epilogue
• Appendix A. Lane's Fully Convective Gas Spheres
• Appendix B. Ritter's Polytropic Gas Spheres
• Appendix C. Ritter's Theory of Pulsating Stars
• Appendix D. Radial and Nonradial Stellar Pulsations
• Appendix E. Bohr's Model of the Atom
• Appendix F. Einstein's Mass-Energy Relation
• Appendix G. Three Important Nuclear Reactions
• General Bibliography