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Horace Lamb
Times obituary
A GREAT MATHEMATICAL PHYSICIST
In the death of Sir Horace Lamb, which occurred yesterday, at the age of 85, mathematical science loses one of its brightest ornaments and Cambridge society one of its most venerable figures. During his long life, he systematized several branches of applied mathematics, in addition to making individual contributions of the highest importance. Hydrodynamics was the most vigorous offspring of his fertile brain, but tidal theory and seismology owe not a little to him, as does aeronautics, to which his years of retirement were largely devoted. The primary aim of science in Lamb's view was to explore the facts of nature, to ascertain their mutual relations, and to arrange them as far as possible in a consistent and intelligible whole. The material effects came later, if at all, and often by a very indirect path. The mathematician's task, to his mind, had an aesthetic character He took delight in the comparison of a well-ordered piece of algebraic analysis with a musical composition, and bemoaned the passing of the scientific memoir, which in the hands of a Lagrange or a Poisson had the completeness and austerity of a great work of art.
He regretted the extravagant claims sometimes made on behalf of science, but not by its real leaders, and asserted that its province, as he defined it, was vast, but had its limits. For himself he could not draw a sharp distinction between pure and applied mathematics, and was never tired of quoting Fourier's saying: ""L'étude approfondie de la nature est la source la plus féconde des découvertes mathématiques." It was perhaps this realization which made him look somewhat askance at the "arithmetization of all mathematics," when that was the vogue. He made a point of the frank appeal to intuition by the great mathematical physicists, citing the example of Gauss, who, when questioned on the progress of a piece of research he had undertaken, replied that he had arrived at the theorems and required only to find the proofs.
Lamb knew far more about the history of his science than most of his colleagues, and his knowledge extended in some degree back to its Greek sources. One comment thereon is worth citing as an example of his dry humor. When presiding over Section A of the British Association at Cambridge in 1904, he observed:
"If any one scientific invention can claim pre-eminence over all others, I should be inclined myself to erect a monument to the unknown inventor of the mathematical point, as the supreme type of that process of abstraction which has been a necessary condition of scientific work from the very beginning."
An eminent engineer subsequently told him that if the scale of subscriptions was to be appropriate to the dimensions of the object to be commemorated, he would gladly head the list!
Lamb was born at Stockport on November 27, 1849. From Stockport Grammar School he passed on to Owens College, Manchester. The college was already gathering to itself a brilliant body of teachers. The Professor of Mathematics, Barker, had the singular habit of teaching quaternions before Cartesian geometry, but this was perhaps no disadvantage with his abler pupils, such as Lamb and J. J. Thomson. Like Thomson, his junior by seven years, Lamb went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and there became second Wrangler and second Smith's prizeman. He was elected a Fellow of his college and quickly began those hydrodynamic investigations on which his fame so securely rests.
This particular line of research fitted in well with the general revision of the special sciences then being conducted under the stimulus of Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy." But in 1875, on his marriage to Miss Elizabeth Foot of Dublin, Lamb accepted an invitation to become Professor of Mathematics at Adelaide University. He took advantage of the change to put his ideas in order, and in 1878 his first book appeared under the title, A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of the Motion of Fluids. His treatment of vortex and cyclic motion, with their electromagnetic analogues, the discontinuous jets of Helmholtz and Kirchhoff, the motion of perforated solids through a liquid, and the effects of viscosity was bold and original. The skill with which he handled the complicated mathematics, his lucidity, and his powers of systematization won for him an immediate and complete success. From 1881 to 1884 he published a brilliant series of memoirs dealing with the application of harmonic analysis to vibrational problems.
Obviously his recall to England could not be long delayed. In 1884 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year he returned to Manchester to succeed his old teacher as Professor of Mathematics. In 1889-90 he published a number of valuable papers on the elastic deformation of plates and shells. To his administrative abilities no less than to his teaching the young university—it had received its charter in 1880—owed more than can be expressed. He was President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, one of the most important of the provincial academies. He retired from his chair in 1920, though still displaying the vigour of many a man 20 years his junior, and went to live at Cambridge.
Lamb's teaching years were marked by a succession of books, of which his "Hydrodynamics," published in 1895, has become the standard treatise on the subject. The sixth revision, in 1933, although the work of a man of 83, and not wholly brought into line with the latest ideas, shows no signs of being super-seded. His "Elementary Course of Infinitesimal Calculus" went into a third edition in 1919, which was significant of the new and more logical treatment of the exponential function on the basis of its fundamental property. His "Dynamical Theory of Sound" appeared in 1910, his "Statics" in 1912, and his "Dynamics" in 1914. The series was completed by his "Higher Mechanics" in 1920.
To Lamb, who taught so ardently that science was its own reward, there fell more than the usual share of honors. In the case of the Royal Society, honors were accompanied by duties, for he served on its council for three periods of two years and was twice vice-president. He was awarded the society's Royal Medal in 1902 and its highest honor, the Copley Medal, in 1924. Seven universities honored him with their doctorates. He was a foreign member of the Reale Accademia dei Lincei, and Trinity College, Cambridge, made him an honorary Fellow. He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1902 to 1904, and a De Morgan medallist in 1911. As sectional president of the British Association in 1904, he devoted his address ostensibly to the place of Stokes in mathematical physics, but really covered the whole evolution of science; and in presiding over the whole association at Southampton in 1925, he dealt specifically with the progress of geophysics. His Rouse Ball lecture at Cambridge in 1924 gave him another opportunity to dilate refreshingly on the evolution and character of his science. He was knighted in 1931.
The death of his wife in 1930 dissolved a long and ideal companionship. They had three sons and four daughters, in whose varied accomplishments they found great satisfaction. Their eldest son, Ernest Horace, was born during their Adelaide years, is now Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at East London College in the University of London, now to be renamed Queen Mary College. Their second son, W. R. M. Lamb, is Secretary of the Royal Academy and author of several classical studies, and was, like his father, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge bridge. Another son, Henry, is an artist of distinction, and their youngest daughter, Dorothy, is the wife of Sir John Reeve Brooke, of the Electricity Commission.
A GREAT MATHEMATICAL PHYSICIST
In the death of Sir Horace Lamb, which occurred yesterday, at the age of 85, mathematical science loses one of its brightest ornaments and Cambridge society one of its most venerable figures. During his long life, he systematized several branches of applied mathematics, in addition to making individual contributions of the highest importance. Hydrodynamics was the most vigorous offspring of his fertile brain, but tidal theory and seismology owe not a little to him, as does aeronautics, to which his years of retirement were largely devoted. The primary aim of science in Lamb's view was to explore the facts of nature, to ascertain their mutual relations, and to arrange them as far as possible in a consistent and intelligible whole. The material effects came later, if at all, and often by a very indirect path. The mathematician's task, to his mind, had an aesthetic character He took delight in the comparison of a well-ordered piece of algebraic analysis with a musical composition, and bemoaned the passing of the scientific memoir, which in the hands of a Lagrange or a Poisson had the completeness and austerity of a great work of art.
He regretted the extravagant claims sometimes made on behalf of science, but not by its real leaders, and asserted that its province, as he defined it, was vast, but had its limits. For himself he could not draw a sharp distinction between pure and applied mathematics, and was never tired of quoting Fourier's saying: ""L'étude approfondie de la nature est la source la plus féconde des découvertes mathématiques." It was perhaps this realization which made him look somewhat askance at the "arithmetization of all mathematics," when that was the vogue. He made a point of the frank appeal to intuition by the great mathematical physicists, citing the example of Gauss, who, when questioned on the progress of a piece of research he had undertaken, replied that he had arrived at the theorems and required only to find the proofs.
Lamb knew far more about the history of his science than most of his colleagues, and his knowledge extended in some degree back to its Greek sources. One comment thereon is worth citing as an example of his dry humor. When presiding over Section A of the British Association at Cambridge in 1904, he observed:
"If any one scientific invention can claim pre-eminence over all others, I should be inclined myself to erect a monument to the unknown inventor of the mathematical point, as the supreme type of that process of abstraction which has been a necessary condition of scientific work from the very beginning."
An eminent engineer subsequently told him that if the scale of subscriptions was to be appropriate to the dimensions of the object to be commemorated, he would gladly head the list!
Lamb was born at Stockport on November 27, 1849. From Stockport Grammar School he passed on to Owens College, Manchester. The college was already gathering to itself a brilliant body of teachers. The Professor of Mathematics, Barker, had the singular habit of teaching quaternions before Cartesian geometry, but this was perhaps no disadvantage with his abler pupils, such as Lamb and J. J. Thomson. Like Thomson, his junior by seven years, Lamb went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and there became second Wrangler and second Smith's prizeman. He was elected a Fellow of his college and quickly began those hydrodynamic investigations on which his fame so securely rests.
This particular line of research fitted in well with the general revision of the special sciences then being conducted under the stimulus of Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy." But in 1875, on his marriage to Miss Elizabeth Foot of Dublin, Lamb accepted an invitation to become Professor of Mathematics at Adelaide University. He took advantage of the change to put his ideas in order, and in 1878 his first book appeared under the title, A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of the Motion of Fluids. His treatment of vortex and cyclic motion, with their electromagnetic analogues, the discontinuous jets of Helmholtz and Kirchhoff, the motion of perforated solids through a liquid, and the effects of viscosity was bold and original. The skill with which he handled the complicated mathematics, his lucidity, and his powers of systematization won for him an immediate and complete success. From 1881 to 1884 he published a brilliant series of memoirs dealing with the application of harmonic analysis to vibrational problems.
Obviously his recall to England could not be long delayed. In 1884 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year he returned to Manchester to succeed his old teacher as Professor of Mathematics. In 1889-90 he published a number of valuable papers on the elastic deformation of plates and shells. To his administrative abilities no less than to his teaching the young university—it had received its charter in 1880—owed more than can be expressed. He was President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, one of the most important of the provincial academies. He retired from his chair in 1920, though still displaying the vigour of many a man 20 years his junior, and went to live at Cambridge.
Lamb's teaching years were marked by a succession of books, of which his "Hydrodynamics," published in 1895, has become the standard treatise on the subject. The sixth revision, in 1933, although the work of a man of 83, and not wholly brought into line with the latest ideas, shows no signs of being super-seded. His "Elementary Course of Infinitesimal Calculus" went into a third edition in 1919, which was significant of the new and more logical treatment of the exponential function on the basis of its fundamental property. His "Dynamical Theory of Sound" appeared in 1910, his "Statics" in 1912, and his "Dynamics" in 1914. The series was completed by his "Higher Mechanics" in 1920.
To Lamb, who taught so ardently that science was its own reward, there fell more than the usual share of honors. In the case of the Royal Society, honors were accompanied by duties, for he served on its council for three periods of two years and was twice vice-president. He was awarded the society's Royal Medal in 1902 and its highest honor, the Copley Medal, in 1924. Seven universities honored him with their doctorates. He was a foreign member of the Reale Accademia dei Lincei, and Trinity College, Cambridge, made him an honorary Fellow. He was president of the London Mathematical Society from 1902 to 1904, and a De Morgan medallist in 1911. As sectional president of the British Association in 1904, he devoted his address ostensibly to the place of Stokes in mathematical physics, but really covered the whole evolution of science; and in presiding over the whole association at Southampton in 1925, he dealt specifically with the progress of geophysics. His Rouse Ball lecture at Cambridge in 1924 gave him another opportunity to dilate refreshingly on the evolution and character of his science. He was knighted in 1931.
The death of his wife in 1930 dissolved a long and ideal companionship. They had three sons and four daughters, in whose varied accomplishments they found great satisfaction. Their eldest son, Ernest Horace, was born during their Adelaide years, is now Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at East London College in the University of London, now to be renamed Queen Mary College. Their second son, W. R. M. Lamb, is Secretary of the Royal Academy and author of several classical studies, and was, like his father, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge bridge. Another son, Henry, is an artist of distinction, and their youngest daughter, Dorothy, is the wife of Sir John Reeve Brooke, of the Electricity Commission.
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