III. Bakerian lecture, 1917. — The configurations of rotating compressible masses

Source abstract

Abstract 1. On the supposition that astronomical matter may be treated as incompressible and homogeneous, a single star rotating freely in stable equilibrium can be spheroidal or ellipsoidal, but of no other shape, while Darwin has shown that both components of a binary star must be very approximately of the ellipsoidal shape. Both for the interpretation of astronomical observations and for the more general purposes of cosmogony, it becomes of importance to examine how the sequence of figures assumed by an ideal homogeneous mass will be modified by the compressibility and non-homogeneity of actual astronomical matter.