Noel Bryan Slater

Noel Bryan Slater , often quoted as NB Slater , (* 1912 in Blackburn ; † January 31, 1973 ) was a British mathematician and physicist who dealt with statistical mechanics and physical chemistry as well as probability theory.

Slater attended Edinburgh University , where he studied with Edmund Taylor Whittaker , among others , and Cambridge University ( Gonville and Caius College ), where he received his doctorate in statistical mechanics in 1939 with Ralph Fowler . He was then an observer at the Solar Observatory in Cambridge under Frederick John Marrion Stratton (1881-1960), where he dealt with solar flares . During the Second World War he worked in military research ( ballistics ). Shortly after the war he became a lecturer and from 1958 reader for applied mathematics at the University of Leeds , where Thomas George Cowling was later his colleague, known for his 1939 textbook on kinetic gas theory with Sydney Chapman . Slater also continued to work here (as under Fowler) with the physical theory of unimolecular reactions, which led to his textbook on it in 1959 and to the fact that he was visiting professor of chemistry at Cornell University in 1955 . At the same time he was secretary of the Leeds Astronomical Society. In 1961 he became a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Hull .

In his last years he mainly dealt with the theory of queues after he had already dealt with the resulting mathematical problems in his work on statistical mechanics, for example with "dynamics" (asymptotic distribution) of integer multiples of irrational numbers mod 1 .

He also edited the English edition of Viktor Nikolajewitsch Kondratjew's book Chemical kinetics of gas reactions (Pergamon Press 1964), for which he learned Russian. Shortly after the war, at the instigation of his teacher Whittaker, he edited the incomplete chapters of the book by the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington Fundamental Theory , who died in 1944, from neglected manuscripts . This was done in the form of a book from the analysis of the abandoned manuscripts. Eddington, who was highly valued at that time in Great Britain because of his work in the 1920s on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which he helped achieve the breakthrough, and on the structure of stars, Eddington claimed in later years to have derived exact values for fundamental natural constants but this turned out to be unsustainable, a result that Slater also came to after intensive study of the estate. Slater himself spoke to Eddington about the book (1942 and 1944) before Eddington's death and used several preliminary versions of Eddington's book in his estate.

In 1954 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1939 a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society .

literature

Slater Theory of unimolecular reactions , Methuen, London, Cornell University Press 1959
Slater The development and meaning of Eddington's fundamental theory, including a compilation of Eddington's unpublished Manuscripts , Cambridge University Press 1957
Slater Distribution problems and physical applications , Compositio Mathematica, Vol. 16, 1964, p. 176 (PDF; 662 kB)
David George Kendall , Obituary in Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 6, 1974
William McCrea , Obituary in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 15, 1974, p. 67, online

References

↑ More precisely with the distribution of the distances of the natural numbers N, for which (component-wise mod 1) falls in a given convex area (like a hyperellipsoid). Are linearly independent. ${\ displaystyle N \ nu _ {i}, i = 1, ..., d}$ ${\ displaystyle 1, \ nu _ {1}, .., \ nu _ {d}}$
↑ English transcription VN Kondratev (1902–1979)
↑ published by Whittaker without the incomplete chapters at Cambridge University Press in 1946
↑ So already in his Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons from 1936
↑ CW Kilmister Eddington's Search for a fundamental theory - a key to the universe , Cambridge University Press 1994, p. 226. Kilmister himself also dealt with Eddington's late phase since the 1950s and used Slater's book in his later book from 1994 as Basis (Kilmister, loc. Cit., P. 6).

personal data
SURNAME	Slater, Noel Bryan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Slater, NB
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Blackburn
DATE OF DEATH	January 31, 1973

[1] More precisely with the distribution of the distances of the natural numbers N, for which (component-wise mod 1) falls in a given convex area (like a hyperellipsoid). Are linearly independent. ${\ displaystyle N \ nu _ {i}, i = 1, ..., d}$ ${\ displaystyle 1, \ nu _ {1}, .., \ nu _ {d}}$

[2] English transcription VN Kondratev (1902–1979)

[3] ublished by Whittaker without the incomplete chapters at Cambridge University Press in 1946

[4] So already in his Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons from 1936

[5] CW Kilmister Eddington's Search for a fundamental theory - a key to the universe , Cambridge University Press 1994, p. 226. Kilmister himself also dealt with Eddington's late phase since the 1950s and used Slater's book in his later book from 1994 as Basis (Kilmister, loc. Cit., P. 6).