Michael James Lighthill

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Sir Michael James Lighthill (born January 23, 1924 in Paris , † July 17, 1998 on Sark ) was a British professor of applied mathematics .

biography

Lighthill's father was the mining engineer Ernest Balzar Lighthill, who was of Alsatian origin and changed his name to Lichtenberg during the First World War to escape anti-German prejudice. The 54 year old father was working in France at the time of Lighthill's birth and the family moved back to England three years after he was born.

Lighthill attended Winchester College , where he befriended Freeman Dyson - together they studied the Principia Mathematica by Russell and Whitehead and the Cours d'Analyse by Camille Jordan. At the age of 15, Lighthill received a scholarship to Trinity College , Cambridge . However, he didn't accept the scholarship until 2 years later, because he wanted to wait until he turned 17. After two years of study, he received his bachelor's degree in 1943.

While at Cambridge he met Nancy Dumaresq, who was studying mathematics at Newnham College . After graduation, he sought a job at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough , as his girlfriend was working there, but then took a job at the National Physical Laboratory , Teddington in the aerodynamics department . He married Dumaresq in 1945 after finishing his work at the National Physical Laboratory. 1945 to 1949 he was a Fellow of Trinity College.

Lighthill became a lecturer at Manchester University in 1946 . Here he founded a department that dealt with hydrodynamics and quickly dominated English research in the field. In 1950 he was appointed professor of applied mathematics in Manchester. Since the mid-1940s, he has been working intensively on supersonic flows around airfoils and the associated thermodynamics of shock waves. In addition, he developed the basics for the formulation of an acoustic analogy to describe the flow noise , which is still the basis for a large number of approaches in numerical aeroacoustics today (Proceedings Royal Society 1952, 1954). He showed that the generation of noise increases with the eighth power of the aircraft speed.

In 1959 he left Manchester and became the director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Here he worked on the development of commercial television and communication satellites, as well as manned space travel. His work in the field of supersonic aircraft was later important for the development of the Concorde .

Another of his areas of work was non-linear dynamics (especially in acoustics including active noise control), applications to the study of road traffic flows, meteorological applications and flow physics of biological systems (from flow in arteries, bird flight, swimming of fish to the movement of amoeba).

Having already in 1953 a member of the Royal Society had become, he became in 1964 the Royal Society Research Professor at Imperial College in London . In the same year he founded the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, of which he was first director in 1967, in order to achieve better promotion of applied mathematics. Also in 1964 he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society.

When Paul Dirac gave up the Lucasian Chair in Cambridge in 1969 , Lighthill was appointed as his successor. He held this professorship for ten years until he was replaced by Stephen Hawking . After that, Lighthill became head (Provost) of University College London , which he remained until his retirement in 1989. Despite being busy fundraising and administration, he still found time to do research. So he occupied himself z. B. with chaotic systems, the use of wave energy and human hearing. After his retirement, he chaired an international committee for reducing the effects of natural disasters of the International Council of Scientific Unions.

In 1973 he chaired a committee in Great Britain (on behalf of the British Science Research Council) to study the prospects for artificial intelligence research (AI). The "Lighthill Report" came to a very critical assessment of this research direction (including language processing and robotics). As a result, government support for AI in Great Britain was suspended except for two universities.

His passion for swimming around islands all over the world, which he loved to talk about, finally became undoing on July 17, 1998. Due to a heart valve defect, he died while trying to swim around the Channel Island of Sark for the sixth time (he had almost completed the nine miles). He left behind his wife, a son and four daughters.

In 1964 he received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. In 1965 he received the gold medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (of which he was a fellow in 1961) and in 1981 the Harvey Prize in Israel. He was since 1958 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Philosophical Society , the US National Academy of Science (1976), the French Academy of Sciences (1976), the National Academy of Engineering (1977) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (1994). Since 1975 he has been a corresponding member of the Braunschweig Scientific Society . In 1983 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1984 he received the GI Taylor Medal . In 1998, shortly before his death, he had been awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society .

From 1965 to 1969 he was secretary and then vice-president of the Royal Society. From 1984 to 1988 he was President of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. He received 24 honorary doctorates, a. a. from Princeton, Aachen, Lisbon, Paris and St. Petersburg. In 1971 he was ennobled by the Queen as a Knight Bachelor . In 1986 he became an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College.

Fonts

  • On sound generated aerodynamically. I. General theory. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London . Series A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Volume 211, No. 1107, 1952, pp. 564-587, doi : 10.1098 / rspa.1952.0060 .
  • On sound generated aerodynamically. II. Turbulence as a source of sound. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Volume 222, No. 1148, 1954, pp. 1-34, doi : 10.1098 / rspa.1954.0049 .
  • with Gerald Beresford Whitham : On kinematic waves. I. Flood movement in long rivers. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Volume 229, No. 1178, 1955, pp. 281-316, doi : 10.1098 / rspa.1955.0088 .
  • with Gerald Beresford Whitham: On kinematic waves. II. A theory of traffic flow on long crowded roads. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Volume 229, No. 1178, 1955, pp. 317-345, doi : 10.1098 / rspa.1955.0089 .
  • Higher approximations in aerodynamic theory (= Princeton Aeronautical Paperbacks. 5, ZDB -ID 597396-X ). Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1960.
  • Introduction to fourier analysis and generalized functions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1958, (German: Introduction to the theory of Fourier analysis and the generalized functions (= BI university pocket books . 139, ISSN  0521-9582 ). Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim et al. 1966).
  • Mathematical Biofluiddynamics (= Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics. 17). Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Philadelphia PA 1975, ISBN 0-89871-014-6 .
  • Waves in fluids. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1978, ISBN 0-521-21689-3 .
  • An informal introduction to theoretical fluid mechanics (= IMA Monograph Series. 2). Clarendon Press, Oxford et al. 1986, ISBN 0-19-853631-3 .
  • Collected papers. Edited by M. Yousuff Hussaini. 4 volumes, Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1997, ISBN 0-19-509222-8 .

literature

  • Lokenath Debnath: Sir James Lighthill and Modern Fluid Mechanics. Imperial College Press, London et al. 2008, ISBN 978-1-84816-113-9 .
  • David G. Crighton, Tim J. Pedley: Michael James Lighthill (1924-1998). In: Notices of the American Mathematical Society . Volume 46, No. 10, Nov. 1999, pp. 1226-1229, ( digitized ).
  • Malcolm J. Crocker: Sir James Lighthill and his Contributions to Science. Keynote Lecture, Sixth International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, 1999, ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He also liked to take risks in other ways. In 1959 he was sentenced to a symbolic £ 1 fine for jumping off a train that did not stop at its desired Crewe stop
personal data
SURNAME Lighthill, Michael James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lighthill, Sir Michael James (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1998
Place of death Sark