Arthur Doodson

Arthur Thomas Doodson (born March 31, 1890 in Rochdale , Lancashire , † January 10, 1968 in Birkenhead ) was a British oceanographer who dealt with the theory of tides .

Life

Doodson, whose father was manager of a cotton mill, studied from 1908 at the University of Liverpool with degrees in chemistry (1911) and mathematics (1912). He then worked in industry with the calculation of the diffraction of electromagnetic waves on a ball at Ferranti and, during World War I, with ballistic calculations, which were later recognized when they were accepted into the Royal Society and were included in the British anti-aircraft manuals .

In 1919 he became an employee of Joseph Proudman in Liverpool, who set up a research institute for tidal research with him. He dedicated his research career to calculating the tides. He was secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Committee on Tides and, under Proudman, became deputy director of the Tidal Institute in Liverpool, which was merged with the observatory in 1929.

He developed a practical method of tide forecasting based on six Doodson's arguments , incorporating astronomical parameters of the earth-sun-moon system that are used in Fourier analysis of tides. Doodson developed the practical numerical methods for this. Its main work for Fourier analysis of the tide generating potential (Tide generating potential, TGP) was published in 1921; this built on the investigations of George Howard Darwin on the TGP, distinguished 388 different relevant frequencies and considered the best astronomical theory of the orbit of the moon by Ernest William Brown at the time .

He was also involved in building mechanical computers for tide forecasting, notably the Doodson-Légé Tidal Machine. The first such computer, built by Kelvin, Bottomley and Baird in Glasgow, came into the institute in 1924. In addition to astronomical data, he also examined the effects of wind - especially after a storm-related Thames flood in 1928, which he examined on an official basis - and tides in estuaries and shallow waters, for which he created the first practicable predictions. He was also involved in practical oceanographic work, supervising the construction of a flow meter that was used to study the tidal currents in the Irish Sea and undertook oceanographic measurements with Proudman in the 1930s with a small research vessel.

Doodson was co-author of the British Admiralty's Tide Handbook and calculated the tides for the most favorable landing date to land in Normandy in 1944; the landing should take place at sunrise and low tide. After the war he became director of the Tidal Institute in Liverpool. In 1953 he became chairman of the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL). In 1960 he retired.

When he was admitted to the Royal Society in 1933, he was honored not only with his tidal research but also with work on ballistics, statistics and mathematical tables. He was a member of the committee of the British Association for mathematical tables and calculated Riccati-Bessel functions for this purpose, at that time (before 1916) without calculating machines. He dealt with statistics during the First World War from 1916 as an assistant to Karl Pearson at University College London .

He was from 1933 Fellow of the Royal Society and 1953 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1955 he became a CBE .

Doodson was married twice and had a son and daughter from his first marriage.

Fonts

• Perturbations of harmonic tidal constants, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Volume 106, 1924, 513
• The Harmonic Development of the Tide-Generating Potential, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Volume 100, 1921, pp. 305-329
• Meteorological perturbations of sea levels and tides, Monthly Notices Royal Astron. Soc., Geophys. Suppl., April 1924
• with Proudman: On the Tides in an Ocean bounded by two Meridians on a non-rotating Earth, Geophysical J., Volume 1, Suppl. S9, 1927, 468-483
• Tides in oceans bounded by meridians II: Diurnal tides, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., A, 235, 1935, 290-333, III: semidiurnal tides, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., A, Vol. 237, 1938, pp. 311-373
• The analysis of tidal observations, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal, Volume 227, 1928, p. 223
• with HD Warburg: Admiralty Manual of Tides, HMSO London 1941, reprint 1973
• JR Rossiter, RH Corkan, Tidal charts based on coastal data: Irish Sea, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, A, Volume 64, 1954, pp. 90-101
• Oceanic tides, Advances in Geophysics, Volume 5, 1958
• Dynamical Oceanography, 2 volumes, Pergamon Press 1960

literature

• Joseph Proudman, Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society, Volume 14, 1968

Web links

• Biography at the National Oceanographic Center