Peter Barlow

This article is about the mathematician and physicist Peter Barlow. For the civil engineer, see Peter William Barlow .

Peter Barlow

Peter Barlow (born October 13, 1776 in Norwich , † March 1, 1862 in Kent ) was a British mathematician and physicist .

Life

In 1806 he was recommended to teach (assistant mathematical master) at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich , ( London ). He was later promoted to Professor of Mathematics from the Royal Military Academy .

In 1811 Peter Barlow published his first book on number theory under the title Elementary Investigation of the Theory of Numbers . From 1823 to 1833 he worked a lot in the fields of magnetism and electricity . In 1822 he developed the Barlow wheel named after him , the first unipolar motor . In 1825 he received the Medal of Honor from the Royal Society of London , of which he had been a Fellow since 1823.

In 1827 he began with optical experiments. He then constructed special lenses for astronomical telescopes . With George Dollond he developed achromatic diverging lenses , which are also known as Barlow lenses . In 1828 he was elected to the Académie des Sciences and in 1832 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1826 he was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg . In 1833, Barlow combined crown and flint glass for its lenses. Later he was increasingly concerned with the steam locomotive . His sons, Peter William Barlow and William Henry Barlow, were notable engineers in the 19th century. Barlow Island , an island in the archipelago of the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica , is named in his honor .

Fonts

• Elementary Investigation of the Theory of Numbers. 1811.
• New Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary. 1814.
• Essay on the Strength and Stress of Timber and other Materials. 1817.
• Essay on Magnetic Attractions. 1820.

literature

• Barlow, Peter . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 3 : Austria - Bisectrix . London 1910, p. 407 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
• Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium . Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2018, pp. 85, 168, 229 332 u. S. 967 (biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .

Web links

• Entry to Barlow; Peter (1776-1862); Mathematician in the Archives of the Royal Society , London

Individual evidence

1. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Barlow, Peter. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed September 16, 2019 (Russian).