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McCall, G.J.H., Bowden, A.J. and Howarth, R.J. (editors). The History of Meteoritics and Key Meteorite Collections.

London (The Geological Society), Special Publication 256. Price £95.00, ISBN: 978-1-86239-194-9.

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

This special publication of the Geological Society tells the history of meteorite collections, but is much more than its title suggests, including as it does much on the history of meteoritics itself.

The book opens with four papers on the nascent science of meteoritics, with Ursula Marvin giving a comprehensive overview of European science and how the study of stones from the sky emerged as a respectable scientific endeavour in the late 18^th century. A major character in the inception of the science was the physicist Ernst Chladni, who was inspired by the happy coincidence of several widely witnessed and reported fireballs to make a collection of these samples and related historical material. He was already a science establishment figure, through his work on sound, though he risked much of his reputation and livelihood by publishing the book that gave birth to meteoritics.

The broad scene setting is important as a context for the following histories of events and individuals in the field. This section includes a . . . [Full Text of this Article]