Captain Cook, navigator and scientist : Papers presented at the Cook Bicentenary Symposium Australian Academy of Science, Canberra 1 May 1969.

Abstract

Man and occasion met when the Royal Society chose Captain James Cook to command Endeavour on the expedition to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus, a phenomenon of outstanding scientific importance. Its importance was matched by the work of Cook and his fellow-scientists on this and subsequent voyages. Cook was a formidable man: powerful, meticulously painstaking, accurate, and patient. He was the supreme navigator of the eighteenth century, and his observations have been as valuable as they were diverse: from control of scurvy to determining the solar parallax, calculating lunar distances, and disproving the theory of a vast southern continent. The considerable legacy of scientific accomplishments his voyages produced were the subjects of the 1969 Symposium sponsored by the Australian Academy of Science to commemorate Captain Cook{u2019}s work in the Pacific. Six distinguished scientists and historians delivered addresses on Cook and his scientific companions, the observations at Tahiti, his work as scientist and navigator, the botany of the South Pacific region, and the Great Barrier Reef (on which Cook nearly came to grief). This book significantly expands our knowledge of Cook. His voyages and achievements will be as stimulating to those of inquiring mind as they have been challenging to scientists from his own day to ours. Show more