Carl Anton Bjerknes
Carl Anton Bjerknes | |
---|---|
hydrodynamics, mechanical explanation of gravitation | |
Awards | Gold Medal International Exposition of Electricity in Paris |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Mathematician, Physicist |
Institutions | University of Oslo |
Doctoral students | Sophus Lie |
Carl Anton Bjerknes (
Biography
Carl Anton Bjerknes was born in Oslo, Norway. His father was Abraham Isaksen Bjerknes and his mother Elen Birgitte Holmen. Bjerknes studied mining at the University of Oslo, and after that mathematics at the University of Göttingen and the University of Paris. In 1866 he held a chair for applied mathematics and in 1869 for mathematics. Over a fifty-year time period, Bjerknes taught mathematics at the University of Oslo and at the military college.
A pupil of
International Exposition of Electricity
When at the 1881 Paris International Electric Exhibition, he (Carl Anton) and his son (
Family
On June 30, 1859, after returning from his foreign travels, Bjerknes married Wilhelmine Dorothea Koren (10.11.1837–21.10.1923) whose father was a minister in the Church in West Norway. His son Norwegian physicist and meteorologist, Vilhelm Bjerknes continued the work of his father.
Death
Bjerknes died suddenly of a stroke on 20 March 1903 at the age of 77.[4]
Selected works
- Niels Henrik Abel. En skildring af hans liv og videnskabelige virksomhed (A description of his life and scientific activity) (Stockholm. 1880)
References
- ^ Carl Anton Bjerknes (Karen Mathilde Haugland. Store norske leksikon)
- ISBN 0821869140
- ^ Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology, Robert Marc Friedman, Nov 1, 1993
- ^ "To some it may appear strange that the son of C. A. Bjerknes should have been chosen to deliver the commemorative address summing up the life-work of his father. As a matter of fact, however, no other choice could have been made. In his scientific research Bjerknes worked apart from others. His only confidant and colleague was his son. So in the monograph before us the son, after sketching his father's early life, traces step by step the development of the Hydrodynamic Action at a Distance from the days when its author was a pupil under Cauchy, Lamé, and Dirichlet until the last manuscript, written two or three days before his sudden death by apoplexy. Bjerknes left about 40,000 pages of closely written manuscript, accumulated since the early seventies. So great was his love of perfection, his striving for quality rather than quantity that little of all this had been published until the appearance of the Hydrodynamische Fernkrâfte and that which remains is accompanied by a request that nothing be printed without the most careful revision. It is a rare and noble sight to see men like Josiah Willard Gibbs and Bjerknes who are possessed of a spirit of research apart from the common desire to rush into print." —Edmund Beecher Wilson, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol.X, October 1903 to July 1904
Other sources
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Carl Anton Bjerknes", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- Bjerknes, V. (1904), Carl Anton Bjerknes: Gedächtnisrede, Leipzig: J. A. Barth, p. 31
- Wilson, E.B. (1904), "Review: Carl Anton Bjerknes: Gedächtnisrede", Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 10 (10): 516,
- Author profile in the database zbMATH