John Conrad Jaeger

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John Conrad Jaeger (born July 30, 1907 in Sydney , † May 15, 1979 in Canberra ) was an Australian applied mathematician and geophysicist .

life and work

John Jaeger was the son of German-born cigar manufacturer who was naturalized but has long been in the English-speaking world and in the Boer War fought on the British side. Jaeger excelled through academic achievements and studied from 1924 at the University of Sydney . He studied engineering, but also physics and mathematics with Horatio Scott Carslaw . In 1926 he graduated with top marks in mathematics and in 1927 in physics, where he received the university award. In 1928 he continued his studies in Cambridge , where he was in 1930 with the Tripos Wrangler. He did research in theoretical physics (especially quantum mechanics) under R. H. Fowler . In the competition for a Research Fellowship from Trinity College, he was defeated by the famous astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar . He did not do a PhD (but received a D. Sc. From the University of Sydney in 1941) and left Cambridge in 1934 with an M.A. He married in England in 1935 and returned to Australia to be a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Tasmania .

During this time he began working closely with Carslaw on applied mathematics: mathematical theory of conduction and Laplace transform and other applied mathematics issues. This led to the publication of a number of books, including the new edition of Carslaw's Conduction of Heat . His work during World War II covered radar, for example, but also other applied questions about his expertise in heat conduction, from the effects of direct sunlight on the eye to applied geophysics.

Even after the Second World War, his work on radar led to occupation in the then emerging radio astronomy and among other things he dealt with the condition of the lunar surface. In 1949 he became an Associate Professor and in 1950 Professor at the University of Tasmania. In 1951, at the invitation of Mark Oliphant , he went to the newly founded Australian National University , where he founded the geophysics department, a field in which he first had to familiarize himself (but he already had some experience from working in Hobart with geology professor Samuel Warren Carey , an early exponent of continental drift). It was the first professorship for geophysics in Australia. In addition to geothermal energy, he dealt with paleomagnetism, petrology, seismology and rock mechanics. In the latter area he was a consultant for the hydropower plants in the Snowy Mountains (and also for the South African mining industry) and was involved in the development of laboratory measurement methods (triaxial tests, etc.) and investigated friction in rock mechanics. In the field of geothermal energy, he made systematic measurements of the heat flow in the earth's crust in Australia.

From 1963 he was acting head of the physics faculty for two years as successor to Oliphant. He remained head of geophysics until 1971 and retired in 1972, when he moved back to Tasmania.

In 1954 he became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and was its Vice President in 1958/59. In 1970 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1971 he gave the Rankine Lecture (Friction of rocks and stability of rock slopes).

Fonts

  • with Carslaw: Operational methods in Applied Mathematics, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1941
  • with Carslaw: Conduction of Heat in Solids Oxford, Clarendon Press 1947, 2nd edition 1959 (Reprint Oxford University Press 1986)
  • An Introduction to the Laplace Transformation, Melbourne 1946,
  • An Introduction to the Laplace Transformation with engineering applications, Methuen 1959 (3rd edition with Gordon Newstead 1970)
  • Introduction to Applied Mathematics, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1951, 2nd edition with AM Starfield, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1974
  • Elasticity, Fracture and Flow, with engineering and geological applications, Methuen 1956
  • with NGW Cook: Fundamentals of Rock Mechanics, Methuen 1969 (3rd edition 1979)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ However, the competition for the fellowship required a thesis equivalent to a dissertation
  2. ↑ Oliphant, inspired by contacts with Keith Edward Bullen and J. Tuzo Wilson , wanted a geophysical department there, albeit in basic research without exploration geophysics
personal data
SURNAME Jaeger, John Conrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian applied mathematician and geophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Sydney
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1979
Place of death Canberra