Horace Lamb

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George Gabriel Stokes[2]
Signature

Sir Horace Lamb

applied mathematician and author of several influential texts on classical physics, among them Hydrodynamics (1895) and Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910).[5] Both of these books remain in print. The word vorticity was invented by Lamb in 1916.[6]

Biography

Early life and education

Lamb was born in Stockport, Cheshire, the son of John Lamb and his wife Elizabeth, née Rangeley.[4] John Lamb was a foreman in a cotton mill who had gained some distinction by the invention of an improvement to spinning machines, he died when his son was a child. Lamb's mother married again, and soon afterwards Horace went to live with his strict maternal aunt, Mrs. Holland. He studied at Stockport Grammar School, where he made the acquaintance of a wise and kindly headmaster in the Rev. Charles Hamilton, and a graduate of classics, Frederic Slaney Poole, who in his final year became a good friend. It was from these two tutors that Lamb acquired his interest in mathematics and, to a somewhat lesser extent, classical literature.[7]

In 1867, he gained a classical scholarship at Queens' College, Cambridge. Since Lamb's inclination, however, was to pursue a career in engineering, he chose to decline the offer, and instead worked for a year at the Owens College in nearby Manchester, as a means of developing his mathematical proficiency further.[7]

At that time, the Chair of Pure Mathematics at Owens College was held by

Smith's prizeman from the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos in 1862. An acknowledged lecturer of high quality, Lamb prospered under the guidance of Barker, and was elected to a minor scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge.[7]

At Trinity, he was

George Gabriel Stokes
. He was soon elected both a Fellow and a tutor in the college.

University of Cambridge, 1872–75

By 1874, Lamb had become thoroughly invested in his work at Trinity, preparing there an innovative and original series of lectures on the subject of hydrodynamics for third-year students. Richard Glazebrook, a final-year student at the time, wrote of them that they were 'a revelation', and praised Lamb for his lucid presentation of the properties of liquids in rotational motion.[7] However, Lamb soon became romantically involved with Elizabeth Foot, sister-in-law to his former headmaster, and, since the conditions of his position at Trinity stipulated that he should hold it only so long as he was unmarried, he was compelled, in 1875, to resign and continue his work elsewhere.[4]

University of Adelaide, 1876–1885

Lamb's acquaintance from Stockport, Frederic Slaney Poole, had by now for some years lived in

Elder Professor of Mathematics there, and took up the chair in March, 1876. Lamb was instrumental in the establishment of the academic and administrative structure of the university, and lectured in pure and applied mathematics, also giving practical demonstrations in physics.[4]
For the next ten years the average number of students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts course at Adelaide was fewer than twelve; though Lamb also gave some public lectures in the evenings, his workload was relatively light. His deftly rendered and original A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of the Motions of Fluids (which would later be reprinted as Hydrodynamics in 1895) was first published in 1878.

In 1883, Lamb published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society[9] applying Maxwell's equations to the problem of oscillatory current flow in spherical conductors, an early examination of what was later to be known as the skin effect. Lamb was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884.

University of Manchester, 1885–1920

Lamb was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at

Beyer Chair
in 1888, a position Lamb held until retirement in 1920 (Owens College was merged with the Victoria University of Manchester in 1904). His Hydrodynamics appeared in 1895 (6th ed. 1933), and other works included An Elementary Course of Infinitesimal Calculus (1897, 3rd ed. 1919), Propagation of Tremors over the Surface of an Elastic Solid (1904), The Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910, 2nd ed. 1925), Statics (1912, 3rd ed. 1928), Dynamics (1914), Higher Mechanics (1920) and The Evolution of Mathematical Physics (1924).

Later years, 1920–1934

In 1932 Lamb, in an address to the

British Association for the Advancement of Science, wittily expressed on the difficulty of explaining and studying turbulence
in fluids. He reportedly said, "I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic."[10][11]

Lamb is also known for description of special waves in thin solid layers. These are now known as

Lamb waves
.

Family

Lamb married Elizabeth Foot (1845−1930), his former headmaster's sister-in-law, in 1875 and had seven children, including the classicist Walter Lamb, the painter Henry Lamb and the archaeologist Dorothy Lamb. His son Ernest, a professor of engineering at Queen Mary College in London, was the father of the climatologist Hubert Lamb and the grandfather of the Liberal Democrat politician Norman Lamb.

Lamb died in 1934 and was buried at the

Ascension Parish Burial Ground
in Cambridge, with his wife.

Honours and awards

Lamb was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, was twice vice-president, received its

Sir Horace Lamb Chair was created at Manchester.[14] A building at the University of Adelaide also bears his name.[15]

Publications

See also

References

  1. ^ Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics, University of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 325.
  2. ^ Horace Lamb at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1935.0003
    .
  4. ^
    MUP
    , 1974, pp 54–55. Retrieved 5 Sep 2009
  5. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. "Horace Lamb". MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive. University of St Andrews.
  6. ^ Truesdell, C. (1954). The kinematics of vorticity (Vol. 954). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  7. ^ a b c d Brian Launder. (2012). 'Horace Lamb and the circumstances of his appointment at Owens College', Notes Rec. R. Soc. 67: 139–158
  8. ^ "Lamb, Horace (LM867H)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  9. S2CID 111283238
    .
  10. doi:10.1146/annurev.fl.01.010169.000245
    .
  11. ^ "Tackling Turbulence with Supercomputers". Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 30 June 2008.
  12. ^ Presidential Address to the British Association Meeting, held in Southampton in 1925
  13. ^ "A very brief history of Science, Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Manchester" (PDF). Phononics 2023 Programme. June 2023. pp. 12–14. Retrieved 1 April 2024. His famous furniture is still located in the Horace Lamb room in the Alan Turing building
  14. ^ "New Chair to honour Mathematics pioneer Sir Horace Lamb". The University of Manchester. Retrieved 31 May 2013.
  15. ^ "Horace Lamb Building, c1972".
  16. ^ "Review of Hydrodynamics by Horace Lamb". The Athenaeum (3560): 90. 18 January 1896.
  17. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1897-00465-7
    .
  18. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1925-04096-3
    .
  19. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1913-02352-8
    .
  20. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1921-03478-1
    .

External links
Academic offices
Preceded by
Beyer Chair of Applied Mathematics at Victoria University of Manchester

1888 – 1920 		Succeeded by
Professional and academic associations
Preceded by President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
1899–1901 		Succeeded by
Charles Bailey
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