Expanding Earth and Static Universe: Two Papers of 1935

The German-born astronomer Jacob K. E. Halm (1866-1944) wrote in 1935 two papers on quite different subjects, one an astrophysically based argument for the expanding Earth and the other a no less original attempt to explain the galactic redshifts on the basis of a static universe. Of course, Halm was wrong in both cases. The second of the papers is reproduced in toto and compared to other early attempts to avoid the expansion of the universe by means of "tired light" explanations of the redshifts. Although often referred to in the literature on the expanding Earth, the content of Halm's first paper is not well known. This article also provides a brief account of Halm's life and scientific career, which included important studies of the solar spectrum (the "limb effect") and the first version of the mass-luminosity relation for stars.