Michael Longuet-Higgins

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Michael Selwyn Longuet-Higgins (born December 8, 1925 in Lenham (Kent) , † February 26, 2016 in Cambridge ) was a British mathematician, oceanographer and geophysicist.

Career

Longuet-Higgins attended Winchester College (where Freeman Dyson and James Lighthill were classmates). From 1943 he studied with a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1945. He then worked at the Admiralty Research Laboratory, including oceanographic forecasts for the landing companies in the Pacific in the group of George Deacon (Group W). In 1948 he went back to Cambridge University to Harold Jeffreys and Robert Stoneley (1929-2008) and received his doctorate in geophysics in 1951. He received a research grant from Trinity College and went to the USA to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (with Walter Munk ). In 1952 he was back in Cambridge. From 1954 he was at the National Institute of Oceanography in Wormley (Surrey) . From 1967 to 1969 he was Professor of Applied Mathematics and Oceanography at Oregon State University . From 1969 to 1989 he was Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge University and was at the same time at the National Institute of Oceanography. After his retirement he went to the La Jolla Institute in San Diego .

He was visiting scientist at MIT (1957/58), at the University of Adelaide (1964), the University of California, San Diego (UCSD, 1961/62, 1966/67), at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1981 to 1989) and 1981 to 1987 Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville. From 1991 he was at the Institute for Nonlinear Science at UCSD and was Adjunct Professor at the Scripps Institute until 2001.

plant

From 1945 to 1948 he was at the Admirality Research Laboratory in Teddington developed the theory of electromagnetic induction by ocean currents (with applications to the measurement of mass transport by currents and the conductivity of the earth) and the development of microseismics in the earth triggered by ocean waves in deep water, what he also verified experimentally.

He developed a statistical theory of wave heights and introduced the two-dimensional spectrum of ocean waves. He investigated the scattering of randomly generated surfaces with application to water waves and scattering from the ionosphere. His solution of the Laplace equation for the sphere completely solved with application to atmospheric tides . In addition to waves, he also dealt with the dynamics of bubbles, sonoluminescence, the exchange of heat and gases on the sea surface.

Longuet-Higgins also dealt with the theory of the polyhedron. In 1954 he classified uniform polyhedra with HSM Coxeter and JCP Miller . He was already studying polyhedra at Winchester College (his collection of wireframe models was exhibited there) and invented a three-dimensional mathematical toy, rhombo-blocks. They consist of rhombohedra with six rhombuses as side faces, the diagonals of which are in proportion to the golden ratio. They hold together with magnets. He also published an analysis of Slinky .

Memberships and honors

In 1950 he received the Rayleigh Prize from Cambridge University. In 1963 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . He was a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union , Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1979), Honorary Doctorates from the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and the University of Glasgow. He became an Honorary Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 2002 . In 1983 he received the Sverdrup Gold Medal for his many outstanding contributions to understanding the dynamics of surface waves in oceans, including the interaction of waves and currents, nonlinear interaction between waves, wave instabilities and wave breaking (laudatory speech). He also received the International Coastal Engineering Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1984 and the Oceanography Award from the Society for Underwater Technology in 1990.

Private

He is the brother of Christopher Longuet-Higgins .

Fonts

  • Dynamics of Water Waves, Selected Papers of Michael Longuet-Higgins, 3 volumes, Ed. SG Sajjadi, World Scientific 2013

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Coxeter, Longuet-Higgins, Miller, Uniform polyhedra, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A., Volume 246, 1954, pp. 401-445
  2. ↑ Putting Rhombo blocks on the top of the pentagonal coffee table that was mentioned in Dissections: Plane & Fancy, by Greg N. Frederickson , with photo
  3. ↑ Rhombo , side of a manufacturer of the game
  4. ↑ Sverdrup Gold Medal , for his many outstanding contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of ocean surface waves, including wave – current interactions, nonlinear interactions among waves, wave instabilities, and wave breaking .
personal data
SURNAME Longuet-Higgins, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miller, JPC
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and geophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Lenham (Kent)
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 2016
Place of death Cambridge