William Mitchinson Hicks

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William Mitchinson Hicks , FRS (born September 23, 1850 in Launceston , Cornwall , † August 17, 1934 in Crowhurst , Sussex ) was a British mathematician and physicist .

Life

Hicks was first taught at a private school in Devonport . In 1870 he went to Cambridge for further training , where he finished seventh in the Tripos exams in 1873 . In 1874 he became one of the first members of the Cavendish Laboratory under James Clerk Maxwell . In 1876 he became a fellow of St. John's College. 1892 to 1897 he was Principal of Firth College in Sheffield , which went up in 1897 in University College Sheffield , and then its Principal. When it became Sheffield University in 1905, he was its Vice Chancellor.

Hicks studied vortices in liquids. According to an idea by Lord Kelvin (1867), vortex rings in the ether , which was imagined as a liquid, were considered possible models of atoms. Many eminent theoretical physicists in Great Britain worked on this theory, for example the later Nobel Prize winner JJ Thomson in his Adams Prize essay of 1882, who also applied the theory to chemistry. Hicks proved that hollow vortex rings were solutions to the hydrodynamic equations, and vortex filaments. In 1895, Hicks gave an optimistic report to the British Association on vortex theory as the fundamental theory of physics .

After Joseph Larmor had published his book Aether and Matter in 1900 and in it had explained the negative outcome of the Michelson-Morley experiment by length contraction during movement in the ether, which for him was the result of his own electrodynamic theory, this was criticized by Hicks by referring to the The significance of the Michelson-Morley experiment and its explanation by contraction in length contested. That was the reason why Larmor sought confirmation through a differently structured experiment and suggested the Trouton Noble experiment .

Hicks received the Royal Medal in 1912 for his research in mathematical physics ("On the ground of his researches in mathematical physics") and in 1920 the Adams Prize . In 1885 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . The Hicks Building at Sheffield University, which houses physics and mathematics, among other things, is named in his honor.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andrew Warwick: The sturdy protestants of science: Larmor, Trouton and the earth's motion through the ether. In: Jed Z. Buchwald (Ed.): Scientific Practice. University of Chicago Press 1995, pp. 300-344.
  2. ↑ Adams Price
personal data
SURNAME Hicks, William Mitchinson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Launceston , Cornwall
DATE OF DEATH 17th August 1934
Place of death Crowhurst , Sussex