A Simple Question

In article , "Jonathan
Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
writes:

I wouldn't characterise dark matter as primarily a prediction from
*cosmology*. Rather, I'd credit galaxy rotation curves (both for
our own Milky Way galaxy and other nearby galaxies) as being the
key data arguing for dark matter or modified gravity. See, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_... _the_problem
The galaxies in question are all close enough that we can analyse
them (and infer that either there's dark matter and/or there's some
sort of modified gravity) *without* worrying about cosmology.

Right. There is a new review article on MOND, including of course the
observations which lead one to postulate dark matter and/or MOND:

http://relativity.livingreviews.org/...s/lrr-2012-10/

(This is freely accessible to anyone without charge or registration.)

I haven't read it yet, but it seems there is a relatively new book
reviewing the history of this subject, by Bob Sanders:

Sanders, R.H., The Dark Matter Problem: A Historical Perspective,
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York, 2010)

some of which you can see he

http://books.google.de/books?id=RpuA...IC&redir_esc=y

Several years or even decades after galaxy rotation curves and galaxy
clusters indicated that one needs dark matter (and/or MOND), the
combination of measuring the cosmological density parameter Omega and a
better understanding of big-bang nucleosynthesis provided evidence for
non-baryonic matter. Since baryons account for luminous matter (and
there are dark baryons as well), this non-baryonic matter is also dark.

wasn't until 1838 (by Bessel, today best known for what we call
"Bessel functions").

Among astronomers, he is perhaps better known for the parallax
measurement. :-)