Édouard Roche

Édouard Albert Roche (French: [edwaʁ albɛʁ ʁɔʃ]; 17 October 1820 – 27 April 1883) was a French astronomer and mathematician, who is best known for his work in the field of celestial mechanics. His name was given to the concepts of the Roche sphere, Roche limit, and Roche lobe. He also was the author of works in meteorology.

Édouard Roche
Édouard Roche
Born(1820-10-17)17 October 1820
Montpellier
Died27 April 1883(1883-04-27) (aged 62)
NationalityFrench
Alma materUniversity of Montpellier
Known forRoche sphere, Roche limit, Roche lobe
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics, astronomy

Biography

He was born in Montpellier, and studied at the University of Montpellier, receiving his D.Sc. in 1844 and later becoming a professor at the same institution, where he served in the Faculté des Sciences starting in 1849.[1] Roche made a mathematical study of Laplace's nebular hypothesis and presented his results in a series of papers to the Academy of Montpellier from his appointment until 1877. The most important were on comets (1860) and the nebular hypothesis itself (1873). Roche's studies examined the effects of strong gravitational fields upon swarms of tiny particles.

He is perhaps most famous for his theory that the planetary rings of Saturn were formed when a large icy moon came too close to Saturn and was pulled apart by gravitational forces. He described a method of calculating the distance at which an object held together only by gravity would break up due to tidal forces; this distance became known as the Roche limit.

His other best known works also involved orbital mechanics. The Roche sphere describes the limits at which an object which is in orbit around two other objects will be captured by one or the other, and the Roche lobe approximates the gravitational sphere of influence of one astronomical body in the face of perturbations from another heavier body around which it orbits.

Works

Roche's works are in French, his vernacular language.

Lists of works
gollark: Oh, and a bunch of HTTP requests keep dying so stuff breaks weirdly.
gollark: Pastebin is rate-limiting you so it's falling back to the osmarks.tk copies of potatOS, which are outdated.
gollark: Oh, hey, I figured out ANOTHER thing which is happening!
gollark: Is that yours?
gollark: Hmm, I have a perf monitoring alert from 17085.

See also

References
  • Z. Kopal, The Roche problem, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0129-3.
  1. Brush, Stephen G. (1996), A History of Modern Planetary Physics: Nebulous Earth, 1, Cambridge University Press, p. 96, ISBN 0521441714


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