Harry Bateman

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Harry Bateman (born May 29, 1882 in Manchester , † January 21, 1946 in Pasadena ) was a British mathematician who dealt with analysis and mathematical physics.

life and work

Bateman was the son of a pharmaceutical salesman and went to school in Manchester. From 1900 he studied mathematics at Cambridge on a scholarship , where he was the first ( Senior Wrangler ) to take the Tripos exams in 1903 . In 1905 he won the Smith Prize for an essay on differential equations and became a Fellow of Trinity College . In 1905/06 he attended the universities of Paris and Göttingen, where he made himself familiar with the work of David Hilbert's school on integral equations. In 1906 he became a lecturer at the University of Liverpool and in 1907 a reader in mathematical physics in Manchester. In 1910 he went to the USA, first at Bryn Mawr College and from 1912 at Johns Hopkins University , where in 1913 he made up for his doctorate, which was not absolutely necessary for an academic career in England ("The quartic curve and its inscribed configurations", at Frank Morley). In 1917 he became a professor at what would become the California Institute of Technology (then Throop College), where he stayed for the rest of his career.

Bateman dealt in particular with partial differential equations of mathematical physics (with applications in particular in electrodynamics and hydrodynamics), integral transformations and special functions, but also with geometry. He also dealt with applied mathematics, such as the stability of aircraft, wave resistance of ships and integral equations in the propagation of earthquake waves. Even as a student in his early semesters, he published mathematical papers and remained very productive throughout his life. His posthumous writings resulted in the Bateman Manuscript Project , tables of special functions and integral transformations that were published at Caltech by Arthur Erdélyi , Fritz Oberhettinger , Wilhelm Magnus , Francesco Tricomi .

In 1909, at the same time as Ebenezer Cunningham , he showed the invariance of Maxwell's equations under conformal transformations that generalize the invariance under the Lorentz group ( spherical wave transformation ).

Since 1924 he was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1928 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1930 a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. In 1935 he was Vice President of the American Mathematical Society . He was to receive an award from the Institute of Aeronautical Science in New York when he succumbed to a heart condition while on the train ride.

Bateman had been married since 1912 and had a son and daughter (who died early). He was also an excellent chess player.

Fonts

Wikisource: Harry Bateman  - Sources and full texts (English)
  • The Conformal Transformations of a Space of Four Dimensions and their Applications to Geometrical Optics , 1908, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 7, 70-89
  • The mathematical analysis of electrical and optical wave-motion on the basis of Maxwell's equations, Cambridge University Press 1915, Dover 1955
  • Partial differential equations of mathematical physics, Cambridge University Press 1932, Dover 1944, 1959
  • with Albert A. Bennett, William E. Milne: Numerical integration of differential equations, Bulletin of the National Research Council, 1933, Dover 1956
  • with Francis Murnaghan , Hugh Dryden: Hydrodynamics, National Research Council, Washington DC, 1932, 1956
  • Differential equations, Longmans, Green, London 1918, Reprint Chelsea 1966
  • Bateman Manuscript Project: Higher transcendental functions, 3 volumes, McGraw Hill 1953 to 1955, Krieger 1981
  • Bateman Manuscript Project: Tables of Integral Transforms, 2 volumes, McGraw Hill 1954

literature

  • Eric Temple Bell , Obituary in Quarterly Journal Applied Mathematics, Vol. 4, 1946, pp. 105-111.
  • Arthur Erdélyi, Obituary in Obituary Notices of the Royal Society, Vol. 5, 1948, pp. 591-618 and in Journal of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 21, 1946, pp. 300-310
  • Andrew Warwick Masters of Theory. Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics , Chicago University Press 2003
  • José Sanchez-Ron: The reception of special relativity in Great Britain , in Thomas Glick (editor) The Comparative Reception of Relativity , Springer 2007 (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. 103)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bateman “The conformal transformations of a space of four dimensions and their applications to geometrical optics”, Proc. London Math. Soc., Vol. 7, 1909, p. 70.
  2. ^ Member History: Harry Bateman. American Philosophical Society, accessed April 23, 2018 .
  3. ^ Entry on Bateman, Harry (1882-1946) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
personal data
SURNAME Bateman, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Manchester
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1946
Place of death Pasadena , California, USA