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AUGUSTUS EDWARD HOUGH LOVE, born 1863 April 17 at Weston-super-Mare, was the son of a surgeon, and was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School. He went into residence at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1882 as a Sizar, and was elected Scholar in 1884. His mathematical career was a brilliant one; Second Wrangler in 1885, he was classed in the First Division of Part III of the Tripos in 1886, and in that same year was elected a Fellow of his College. He was First Smith's Prizeman in 1887. Whilst College lecturer, and later as one of the small number of University lecturers, he published a number of papers covering a wide range of topics in hydro-dynamics and elasticity. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1894, and became a Fellow of the R.A.S. in 1907.
In 1898 Love was elected to the Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy at Oxford, a Chair which he occupied until his death on 1940 June 5. All his work was characterised by great care and thoroughness, of which his monumental Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity is perhaps the best example. His lectures were carefully prepared, and one of his former pupils tells of the way in which he would illustrate his lectures on dynamics by the use of a large gyroscope, which he brought with him in a taxicab (in later years at any rate). Throughout his residence in Oxford he was a member of the Common Room of The Queen's College, of which college he became a Professorial Fellow in 1927.
In the early years of this century he made a number of important contributions to the theory of the propagation and scattering of electric waves. Of his papers that have a direct or indirect astronomical interest the following may be mentioned:-
In addition to the two books already mentioned, Love was well known for his text-book Theoretical Mechanics. Those who were privileged to receive their first introduction to differential and integral calculus through Love's elementary text-book will readily acknowledge their gratitude.
Love received from the Royal Society a Royal Medal in 1909 and the Sylvester Medal in 1937. In 1926 he was De Morgan Medallist of the London Mathematical Society, of which he was Secretary 1890-1910 and President 1912-13. In 1927 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
R. STONELEY
In 1898 Love was elected to the Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy at Oxford, a Chair which he occupied until his death on 1940 June 5. All his work was characterised by great care and thoroughness, of which his monumental Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity is perhaps the best example. His lectures were carefully prepared, and one of his former pupils tells of the way in which he would illustrate his lectures on dynamics by the use of a large gyroscope, which he brought with him in a taxicab (in later years at any rate). Throughout his residence in Oxford he was a member of the Common Room of The Queen's College, of which college he became a Professorial Fellow in 1927.
In the early years of this century he made a number of important contributions to the theory of the propagation and scattering of electric waves. Of his papers that have a direct or indirect astronomical interest the following may be mentioned:-
On Dedekind's theorem concerning the motion of a liquid ellipsoid under its own attraction (1889).
On the oscillations of a rotating liquid spheroid and the genesis of the Moon (1889).
On Sir William Thomson's estimate of the rigidity of the Earth (1894).
The gravitational stability of the Earth (1908).
Note on the representation of the Earth's surface by means of spherical harmonics of the first three degrees (1908).
The yielding of the Earth to disturbing forces (1909).
The last three are linked with the subject matter of the Essay Some Problems of Geodynamics that won for Love the Adams Prize in 1911. As it happens, the best-known result in that Essay is one that stands a little aloof from the general programme. There was an outstanding difficulty in fully accepting Oldham's interpretation of the "Long-wave phase" in earthquake records as the arrival of waves travelling over the surface of the Earth. The only type of surface wave that theory had hitherto predicted was the Rayleigh wave, in which there is no displacement in a direction lying in the surface and transverse to the direction of propagation; yet a typical seismograph record has strongly marked transverse displacements in the long-wave phase. It was Love's discovery of the possibility of the existence of transverse waves in a heterogeneous medium (Chapter XI of the Essay) that resolved the seeming discrepancy; for these waves the term Love Waves was introduced by Jeffreys, and although printers' readers have been known to query it from time to time this name is well-established in seismological literature. It was in the 1909 paper just cited that Love introduced the numbers and , expressive of the yielding of the Earth to tidal forces and the corresponding disturbance of the gravitational potential; these are sometimes referred to as "Love's numbers."
On the oscillations of a rotating liquid spheroid and the genesis of the Moon (1889).
On Sir William Thomson's estimate of the rigidity of the Earth (1894).
The gravitational stability of the Earth (1908).
Note on the representation of the Earth's surface by means of spherical harmonics of the first three degrees (1908).
The yielding of the Earth to disturbing forces (1909).
In addition to the two books already mentioned, Love was well known for his text-book Theoretical Mechanics. Those who were privileged to receive their first introduction to differential and integral calculus through Love's elementary text-book will readily acknowledge their gratitude.
Love received from the Royal Society a Royal Medal in 1909 and the Sylvester Medal in 1937. In 1926 he was De Morgan Medallist of the London Mathematical Society, of which he was Secretary 1890-1910 and President 1912-13. In 1927 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
R. STONELEY
Augustus Edward Hough Love's obituary appeared in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 101:3 (1941), 136-137.