  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.
