Alfred George Greenhill

Sir Alfred George Greenhill (born November 29, 1847 in London , † February 10, 1927 there ) was a British mathematician.

Life

Greenhill studied since 1866 at St. John's College of Cambridge University , where he Second Wrangler in the Tripos exams in 1870 and Smith Prize from the University won (with the First Wrangler R. Pendlebury). He became a Fellow of St. John's College and from 1873, after a short time at the Royal Indian Engineering College in Coopers Hill, Lecturer and Fellow at Emmanuel College in Cambridge. From 1876 until his retirement in 1908 he was a mathematics professor at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich.

Greenhill dealt in particular with elliptical functions and their applications in mathematical physics, but also (due to his position at the Royal Military Academy) with ballistics, for example in 1879 in a rough formula for the optimal rifling of lead bullets from rifle barrels (depending on the mass, the Weight and the speed of the projectile), as well as with elasticity theory (where he tried to calculate, among other things, the maximum height of trees), hydrodynamics, the theory of the gyro and flight mechanics.

In 1888 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Royal Medal he received in 1906. In 1902 he received the De Morgan Medal of the London Mathematical Society , of which he was also president from 1890 to 1892. In 1908 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . In 1904 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Heidelberg (The mathematical theory of the top considered historically). From 1921 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .

Fonts

Differential and integral calculus, London, MacMillan 1886
The applications of elliptic functions, MacMillan 1892, online copy
Treatise on hydrostatics , London, MacMillan 1894
Notes on dynamics, 1908
Theory of stream lines with applications to an airplane, 1910
Dynamics of mechanical flight, Constable, London 1912
Gyroscopic theory, 1914

literature

Augustus Edward Hough Love , Obituary in Journal of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 3, 1928, p. 27

Web links

John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Alfred George Greenhill. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .

Notes and individual references

↑ It was the textbook from which S. Ramanujan obtained his knowledge of elliptic functions. Littlewood (A mathematicians miscellany, 1953, p. 85) explains Ramanujan's intimate knowledge of these functions while at the same time ignorant of the principles of function theory from Greenhill's very idiosyncratic presentation. Greenhill deals with the theory using specific problems from the applications.
↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
^ List of members since 1666: Letter G. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 20, 2019 (French).

personal data
SURNAME	Greenhill, Alfred George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	November 29, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH	London
DATE OF DEATH	February 10, 1927
Place of death	London

[1] It was the textbook from which S. Ramanujan obtained his knowledge of elliptic functions. Littlewood (A mathematicians miscellany, 1953, p. 85) explains Ramanujan's intimate knowledge of these functions while at the same time ignorant of the principles of function theory from Greenhill's very idiosyncratic presentation. Greenhill deals with the theory using specific problems from the applications.

[2] Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage

[3] List of members since 1666: Letter G. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 20, 2019 (French).