Augustus Love

Barrow-Green, June (2023). Augustus Love. In: Hollings, Christopher and McCartney, Mark eds. Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy: The First 400 Years. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 141–156.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192843210.003.0007

Abstract

Graduating as second wrangler in 1885, Augustus Love began his career as a lecturer in Cambridge, and it was at Cambridge that he produced the first edition of his classic treatise on elasticity (1892–3) which ran into four editions and is still in print today. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1894, he moved to Oxford to take up the Sedleian Chair in 1899, a position he held until his death in 1940. Appreciated as a teacher and acclaimed for his research, in particular his discovery of what are now known as ‘Love waves’, which are important in seismology, he was the recipient of several awards, his work being especially appreciated in Germany. A stalwart of both the London Mathematical Society and the Royal Society, and one of the main organizers of the 1912 Cambridge International Congress of Mathematicians, Love was one of the best-known and distinguished British applied mathematicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI