Henry Goertler

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Henry Görtler , also Heinrich Görtler, (born October 26, 1909 in Calgary ; † December 31, 1987 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German applied mathematician who dealt with hydrodynamics .

As the son of German parents, Görtler grew up bilingually in Calgary and came to Germany in 1923, where he graduated from high school in Giessen. He first studied architecture and then mathematics and physics at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld and then at the University of Giessen under George Jaffé . After he had to emigrate, he turned to mathematics and received his doctorate from Harald Geppert in 1936 ( asymptotic eigenvalue laws in fourth order differential equations ). This was followed by publications on differential geometry. In 1937 he went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research in Göttingen , where he worked closely with Ludwig Prandtl and dealt with boundary layer theory . The Görtler series in the calculation of laminar flat boundary layers (1957) and Taylor-Görtler vortices (instability of a boundary layer in three dimensions) are associated with his name. Prandtl's colleagues Walter Tollmien and Hermann Schlichting had already investigated the instability of two-dimensional planar laminar boundary layers (Tollmien-Schlichting waves). In his habilitation in 1940 Görtler treated the three-dimensional case (also with curved walls) with vortex formation analogous to Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities .

In 1944 he became an associate professor and in 1949 a full professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg , where he established an institute for applied mathematics. He also worked at the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics of the German Research Institute for Aviation, which was affiliated with the university in 1957.

He was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1961), the Leopoldina (1963) and the Braunschweig Scientific Society (1985). In 1967 he received the Carl Friedrich Gauß Medal . 1955 to 1958 he was chairman of the Society for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM). From 1962 he was the German representative in the International Union for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), of which he was president from 1972 to 1976. He was an Honorary Doctor of the University of Calgary and a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics .

With Walter Tollmien and Hermann Schlichting, he edited the collected treatises of his teacher Ludwig Prandtl.

His doctoral students include Professors Hermann Witting , Günther Hämmerlin (Munich) and Klaus Kirchgässner (Stuttgart).

Fonts

  • Dimension analysis: Theory of physical dimensions with applications , Springer Verlag 1975
  • with Walter Tollmien (editor) 50 years of boundary layer research: a commemorative publication in original articles , Vieweg 1955

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ Gabriele Dörflinger: Mathematics in the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . 2014, pp. 21-23.
personal data
SURNAME Goertler, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Calgary
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1987
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau