Joseph Proudman

Joseph Proudman (born December 30, 1888 in Unsworth near Bury , Lancashire , † June 26, 1975 ) was a British oceanographer and applied mathematician who dealt with the theory of tides .

Life

Proudman studied from 1907 on a scholarship at the University of Liverpool and from 1910 mathematics at the University of Cambridge , where he was in the Tripos (Cambridge) in 1912 Wrangler with honors. At Cambridge he was a student of Ernest William Barnes , who put him in contact with Horace Lamb in Manchester, which started his work with hydrodynamics. It was also Lamb who turned his interest to tides by asking him a corresponding research problem and in 1916 brought him to a review article on tides for the British Association for the Advancement of Science. With financial support from the shipowners Booth Brothers in Liverpool, he was able to set up an institute for tidal research (Tidal Institute) in Liverpool in 1919, with Arthur Doodson becoming his most important collaborator. In 1913 he became a lecturer and in 1919 professor of applied mathematics in Liverpool. In the First World War he could not do military service for health reasons, was in Liverpool and in 1918 in the research department of the Woolwich Arsenal. In 1933 he switched to a chair in oceanography. In 1954 he retired. 1940 to 1947 he was Vice-Pro-Chancellor of the university.

At his institute, he and Doodson developed the methods for global tide forecasting. Doodson was mainly responsible for the numerical calculations. In 1929 his institute merged with the Liverpool Observatory and is now called the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. From the 1930s on, he also dealt with other oceanography issues such as temperature, salinity, and ocean circulation. With RJ Daniel, he organized series of measurements, especially in the Irish Sea, from lighthouses, light ships and steamers and, from 1936, with his own small fishing boat, the Zephyr, which was converted into a research ship. In particular, they determined the extent of turbulence and internal friction in tidal currents. After the Second World War, his institute received its own research ship from the university, which he used with the marine biology research station in Port Erin .

His research on tides received international recognition and he was on many national bodies in Great Britain in this regard. In 1949 he was instrumental in founding the National Institute of Oceanography.

Proudman-Taylor's theorem about the essentially two-dimensional nature of geostrophic rivers is named after him and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor .

In 1915 he became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1923 he received the Adams Prize from Cambridge University for an essay on tides and he received an honorary doctorate (LLD) from Liverpool. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1925) and CBE (1952). In 1946 he received the Alexander Agassiz Medal and in 1957 the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society. Proudman was secretary of the International Association of Physical Oceanography and its president from 1951 to 1954. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences.

He had been married to Rubina Ormrod since 1916 and had two sons and a daughter. After his wife's death in 1958, he married Beryl Gould in 1961.

Fonts

• Dynamical Oceanography. London: Methuen, New York: Wiley 1953
• with FS Carey: Elements of Mechanics. London: Longmans, Green 1925
• Bibliography des marées (1910-1927). International Association of Physical Oceanography, Venice 1929
• Tidal Bibliography. Helsingfors, Frenckellska tryckeri aktiebolaget, Helsingfors 1932 (three parts: publications before 1910 and for 1929/1930)

literature

• D. Cartwright, F. Ursell: Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society. Volume 22, 1976, p. 319

Web links

• Biography at the National Oceanography Center