Edward N. Lorenz
Edward Norton Lorenz (* 23. May 1917 in West Hartford , Connecticut ; † 16th April 2008 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an US -American mathematician and meteorologist . He is considered a pioneer of chaos theory and coined the term butterfly effect for the sensitivity to the initial conditions in dynamic systems .
Life
Lorenz studied at Dartmouth College , Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). First he worked for the United States Army Air Corps , for which he worked on weather forecasts. In 1946 he came to MIT and was professor of meteorology there from 1962 to 1987 .
Act
Lorenz observed that even the smallest variations in his initial data of the variables in his simple weather model , which he simulated on a computer around 1960, produced widely differing results in the weather forecasts. This delicate dependence on the initial conditions became known as the so-called butterfly effect. It is interesting here that most calculations that are made with computers have to be rounded, and thus small "errors" are programmed. For complex systems the following applies: "The smallest causes have very different effects" and "The smallest causes can have the greatest effect."
He discovered the underlying mathematics, namely a relatively simple system of equations that creates a pattern of infinite complexity. His Lorenz attractor has three variables, the course of which is chaotic and unpredictable, but the path covered by the values does not overlap.
Awards and honors
- 1961 admission to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1975 Foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences
- 1983 Crafoord Prize in the Geosciences category
- 1988 Foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
- 1990 Foreign member of the Royal Society
- 1991 Kyoto Prize in the Earth and Planetary Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics category .
- 1992 First recipient of the Roger Revelle Medal of the American Geophysical Union
- 2004 Buys Ballot Medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences
- 2004 Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Publications
- Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow. In: Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. Volume 20, Issue 2, March 1963, doi : 10.1175 / 1520-0469 (1963) 020 <0130: DNF> 2.0.CO; 2 , pp. 130–141 ( pdf; 1 MB )
Web links
- Lorenz Center. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)(English).
- Patricia Sullivan: Edward Lorenz; Pioneer in Creation of Chaos Theory. In: The Washington Post . April 17, 2008 (English).
- Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory and butterfly effect, dies at 90. In: MIT News. April 16, 2008(English).
- Thomas Köster: May 23, 1917: Birthday of the meteorologist Edward Lorenz. In: WDR-5 broadcast “ Stichtag ”. May 23, 2007 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Agence France-Presse : Father of the Chaos Theory Edward Lorenz died at the age of 90. In: afp.google.com. April 17, 2008, archived from the original on April 23, 2008 ; accessed on June 6, 2020 .
- ^ A b Lorenz, Edward Norton . In: A Dictionary of Scientists . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999, ISBN 0-19-280086-8 .
- ↑ Лоренц Эдвард (Эдуард) Нортон: Иностранный член. Russian Academy of Sciences, October 27, 2014, accessed June 6, 2020 (Russian).
- ^ Lorenz Receives 1991 Kyoto Prize. In: MIT TechTalk. June 26, 1991, archived from the original on September 23, 2008 ; accessed on June 6, 2020 (English).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lorenz, Edward N. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lorenz, Edward Norton (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mathematician and meteorologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 23, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | West Hartford , Connecticut |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 16, 2008 |
| Place of death | Cambridge , Massachusetts |