The Hill-Brown Theory of the Moon's Motion: Its Coming-to-be and Short-lived Ascendancy (1877-1984)

Preface.-Part I: Hill lays the foundation (1877-1878).- 1. George William Hill, mathematician.-2. Lunar theory from the 1740s to the 1870s - a sketch.-3. Hill on the motion of the lunar perigee.- 4. Hill's Variation Curve.- 5. Early assessments of Hill's work on the lunar theory.- Part II: Brown completes the theory (1892-1908), and constructs tables (1908-1919).-6. E.W. Brown, celestial mechanician.-7. First papers and a book.-8. Initiatives inspired by John Couch Adams' papers.-9. Further preliminaries to the systematic development.-10. Theory of the Motion of the Moon.-11.A solution-procedure without approximations.-12. The 'Main Problem' solved.-13. Correcting for the idealizations.-14. Direct Planetary Perturbations of the Moon.-15. Indirect Planetary Perturbations of the Moon.-16. The effect of the figures of the Earth and Moon .-17. Perturbations of order (delta R)2.-18.The Tables.- 19. Determining the Values of the Arbitrary Constants.-20. Ernest W. Brown as theorist and computer.- Part III: Revolutionary developments in time measurement, computing, and data collection.- 21. Introduction .- 22. Tidal acceleration, fluctuations, and the variability of the Earth's Rotation, from the 1690s to 1939.- 23. The quest for a uniform time: from Ephemeris Time to Atomic Time.- 24. 1984: The Hill-Brown theory is replaced as the basis of lunar ephemerides.- 25. The mathematical and philosophical interest in an analytical solution of the lunar problem.- Appendix: 'Observations on the Desirability of New Tables of the Moon' (file of George William Hill, Naval Observatory Library).-Index.