George Green

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George Green (born July 14, 1793 in Sneinton (pronounced Snenton), † May 31, 1841 in Nottingham ) was a British mathematician and physicist . He was the co-founder of potential theory and the theory of electromagnetism . The Green function and the Green formulas are also based on him.

Life

Greens father, also George Green, born in Nottingham and was a wealthy baker, designer, builder and owner of the eponymous Green's Windmill ( Green's Windmill ), built at that time outside Sneintons on a hill with state of the art. After being shut down in 1860, decaying and threatened with demolition, it has been windmill again since 1985 and is now a science center and memorial ( Green's Windmill and Science Center ) for Sneinton's famous son, to whom it owes its preservation.

Front page of George Green's original essay - now known as Green's Theorem

George attended school for only two years and then worked in his father's mill from 1802 until his death in 1829. Green successfully continued the milling business and in 1831 had to drive a crowd angry about new reform laws from his mill with a musket shot. He was largely self-taught and studied the fundamentals of physical laws in his own mill. It is not known exactly how he acquired the comprehensive mathematical principles that made his later works, but you know he's the Nottingham Subscription Library ( Nottingham Subscription Library visited) since 1823, which copies of works by Pierre-Simon Laplace as Mécanique céleste ("celestial mechanics"), which the then 30-year-old had studied. It is believed that John Toplis, director of the Nottingham High School ( Nottingham High School , founded in 1513) from 1806 to 1819 and translator of scientific works, had influence on George Green. Published in 1828 Green his first work An Essay on the application of mathematical analysis to the theories of electricity and magnetism ( An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism ), in which he potential function and the concept of Green's function for solving partial differential equations and proves Green's theorem. The essay was made available to about 50 subscribers to the library, but was read by only a few, especially not by national and international specialist audiences, with the exception of Sir Edward Bromhead , a trained mathematician. This brought him into academic circles. At the age of 40, Green entered Cambridge University in 1833 and graduated with honors in 1837. He also worked in his mill and made a small fortune with it. He wrote works on acoustics , optics and hydrodynamics and had a successful but short career at the university. Four years after graduation, he died of flu in Nottingham . His work, which was well on its way to international recognition, fell into oblivion with his death and was not rediscovered until 1846 by Lord Kelvin .

Greens grave in Nottingham

When Albert Einstein visited his grave in 1930, he expressed his admiration for the little-known scientist and noted that George Green was more than twenty years ahead of his time.

Green honor is in continuum mechanics the hyperelasticity known as Green-elasticity. A measure of strain, Green's strain tensor, was also named after him.

The pioneers of quantum field theory Freeman Dyson and Julian Schwinger paid tribute to Green as the inventor of the method of Green's function, which as propagators play a fundamental role in the formalism of quantum field theory.

The lunar crater Green and the asteroid (12016) Green are named after him.

Works

literature

  • Doris Mary Cannell: George Green. Mathematician and Physicist. 1793-1841. The Background to His Life and Work. Athlone Press, London a. a. 1993, ISBN 0-485-11433-X .
  • Doris Mary Cannell, NJ Lord: George Green, Mathematician and Physicist 1793-1841. In: The Mathematical Gazette. Volume 66 = No. 478, ISSN  0025-5572 , 1993, pp. 26-51.
  • Thomas Archibald: Connectivity and smoke rings: Green's second identity in its first fifty years. In: Mathematics Magazine. Vol. 62, No. 4, 1989, ISSN  0025-570X , pp. 219-232, online .
  • Ivor Grattan-Guinness : Why did George Green write his essay of 1828 on Electricity and Magnetism? In: The American Mathematical Monthly. Vol. 102, No. 5, 1995, ISSN  0002-9890 , pp. 387-396.
  • Lawrie Challis, Fred Sheard: The Green of Green's Functions. In: Physics Today. December 1993, ISSN  0031-9228 , pp. 41-46.
  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Ernst & Sohn 2018, p. 888 ff, p. 923 f. and p. 1002 f. (Biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dyson: George Green and physics . Physics World, August 1993.
  2. ^ Schwinger: The Greening of Quantum Field Theory. George Green and I . Lecture Nottingham 1993, arxiv : hep-ph / 9310283 .
  3. ↑ George Green in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS
  4. ↑ George Green at the IAU Minor Planet Center (English)
  5. ↑ Mary Cannell (1913-2000) was a French teacher and later in teacher training in Nottingham. She wrote her Green biography after she retired. Biography at Mctutor.
personal data
SURNAME Green, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Sneinton (now in Nottingham)
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1841
Place of death Nottingham