Lamb

Horace Lamb

Born: 29 Nov 1849 in Stockport, England
Died: 4 Dec 1934 in Manchester, England

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Lamb was taught by Stokes and Maxwell at Cambridge then in 1872 he was made a Fellow at Cambridge. In 1875 he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at Adelaide, Australia where he remained for 10 years before accepting a chair at Victoria University in England (now the University of Manchester).

Lamb wrote important texts and made important contributions to applied mathematics, in particular to acoustics and fluid dynamics, for example Mathematical Theory of the Motion of Fluids (1878). His book Hydrodynamics (1895) was for many years the standard work on the subject. His texts had a major role on teaching in British universities for many years.

Other topics he worked on include wave propagation, electrical induction, earthquakes, and the theory of tides. Elected to the Royal Society in 1884, he was knighted in 1931.

His other books include Infinitesimal Calculus (1897), Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910), and Higher Mechanics (1920).

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. Horace Lamb, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society of London 1 (1935), 375-392. 
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