On the history of celestial mechanics, climate models and the ‘Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’ paper of 1976: Some lessons on the relations between models, mathematics and data from the empirical climate sciences

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• Richard Staley (University of Cambridge)
• Thursday 01 May 2025, 10:15-11:15
• Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.

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MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead

Milutin Milankovitch’s mathematical theory of climate is surely one of the most important underpinnings to our understanding the ice ages, but the historiography of the climate sciences has largely been dominated by analyses of public debate and studies of climate models, with particularly important contributions to the latter from Amy Dahan-Dalmedico, Matthias Heymann and Paul Edwards. Rather than considering Milankovitch’s hypotheses about the significance of changes in the earth’s orbit for the timing of ice ages itself, this paper studies the 1976 ‘Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’ paper that was widely taken to confirm it, both as another episode in the long-term history of the relations between celestial mechanics and the physical sciences, and for what it reveals about the many different ways that climate has been modelled. Reflecting on the work of the Making Climate History project I have been engaged in recently, I will approach the collaboration of James D. Hays, John Imbrie and Nick Shackleton (and his research assistant Mike Hall), as one instance of longstanding searches for cycles governing relations between sun and earth (something taken up particularly by André Berger in this period); and to consider the models of time they developed to make sense of sediment cores deposited over hundreds of thousands of years. This is an account of how the imprint of sun and climate—sea temperature and sea level—were found in sludge composed largely of the tests of foraminifera.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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