Investigations of Tides from the Antiquity to Laplace

Vincent Deparis , Hilaire Legros (1) , Jean Souchay (2)

1 IPGS-DGDA - Dynamique globale et déformation active (IPGS)
2 SYRTE - Systèmes de Référence Temps Espace

Tidal phenomena along the coasts were known since the prehistoric era, but a long journey of investigations through the centuries was necessary from the Greco-Roman Antiquity to the modern era to unravel in a quasi-definitive way many secrets of the ebb and flow. These investigations occupied the great scholars from Aristotle to Galileo, Newton, Euler, d'Alembert, Laplace, and the list could go on. We will review the historical steps which contributed to an increasing understanding of the tides.

Domaines: Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]; Géophysique [physics.geo-ph]

Vincent Deparis, Hilaire Legros, Jean Souchay. Investigations of Tides from the Antiquity to Laplace. Jean Souchay, Stéphane Mathis, Tadashi Tokieda. Tides in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp.31-82, 2013, Lecture Notes in Physics, 978-3-642-32961-6. ⟨10.1007/978-3-642-32961-6_2⟩. ⟨hal-00931993⟩