This book provides a history of the study of the tides over two millennia, from the primitive ideas of the Ancient Greeks to present sophisticated space-age techniques. Tidal physics has puzzled some of the world's greatest scientists and mathematicians: Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Kepler, Newton, Bernoulli, Euler, Laplace, Young, Whewell, Airy, Kelvin, G. Darwin, Lamb. The book will appeal to all those interested in how scientific ideas develop. It will particularly interest specialists in oceanography, hydrography, geophysics, geodesy, astronomy and navigation.