Augustus Love

Barrow-Green, June (2024). Augustus Love. In: Hollings, Christopher and McCartney, Mark eds. Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press (In Press).

Abstract

Augustus Love was elected to the Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy in Oxford in 1898 and remained in active in the role until shortly before he died in 1940. Second wrangler in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos of 1885, he had remained in Cambridge until taking up the Chair in 1899. Renowned for his work on elasticity, he also worked in hydrodynamics, classical electrodynamics, and ballistics. His Adams Prize essay, published as 'Some Problems of Geodynamics' (1911), contained what is considered his most important discovery, and now named for him, ‘Love waves’. He played an active role in scientific life in Britain, notably in the Royal Society, the London Mathematical Society, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in all of which he served in several different capacities.

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