Cavendish Laboratory : Poems: 'Theory of Screws' and 'Dr. Ball's Adieu to Screws.
Cavendish Laboratory
<p style='text-align: justify;'>Sir Robert Stawell Ball was an Irish astronomer, who also developed the mathematical theory of screws which was published in his treatise 'The Theory of Screws' in 1876. In 1874 he was appointed the Astronomer Royal for Ireland, which was probably the occasion for which the shorter of the two poems was written. Ball became Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in Cambridge in 1892. The authorship is uncertain. It was first published anonymously in Nature, 14, 30 (1876) as 'The song of the screw'. This photograph of the manuscript may have been taken on the occasion of the Maxwell Centenary Celebration in 1931.</p>