Augustus Edward Hough Love FRS (17 April 1863, Weston-super-Mare – 5 June 1940,

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

), often known as A. E. H. Love, was a mathematician famous for his work on the mathematical theory of

elasticity Elasticity often refers to: *Elasticity (physics), continuum mechanics of bodies that deform reversibly under stress Elasticity may also refer to: Information technology * Elasticity (data store), the flexibility of the data model and the cl ...

. He also worked on wave propagation and his work on the structure of the Earth in ''Some Problems of Geodynamics'' won for him the Adams prize in 1911 when he developed a mathematical model of surface waves known as Love waves. Love also contributed to the theory of

tidal locking Tidal locking between a pair of co-orbiting astronomical bodies occurs when one of the objects reaches a state where there is no longer any net change in its rotation rate over the course of a complete orbit. In the case where a tidally locked b ...

and introduced the parameters known as

Love number The Love numbers (''h'', ''k'', and ''l'') are dimensionless parameters that measure the rigidity of a planetary body and the susceptibility of its shape to change in response to a tidal potential. In 1909, Augustus Edward Hough Love introduced ...

s, used in problems related to Earth tides, the tidal deformation of the solid Earth due to the gravitational attraction of the Moon and Sun. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School and in 1881 won a scholarship to

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

, where he was at first undecided whether to study classics or mathematics. His successful progress (he was placed

Second Wrangler At the University of Cambridge in England, a "Wrangler" is a student who gains first-class honours in the final year of the university's degree in mathematics. The highest-scoring student is the Senior Wrangler, the second highest is the Secon ...

) vindicated his choice of mathematics, and in 1886 he was elected Fellow of the college. In 1899 he was appointed

Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy The Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy is the name of a chair at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford. Overview The Sedleian Chair was founded by Sir William Sedley who, by his will dated 20 October 1618, left the sum o ...

in the

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, a position which he retained until his death in 1940. He was also a Fellow of Queen's College. He authored the two volume classic, ''

A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes'' ...

''. He was the author of several articles in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, including Elasticity and Infinitesimal Calculus His other awards include the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Royal Medal in 1909 and Sylvester Medal in 1937, the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical S ...

De Morgan Medal in 1926. He was secretary to the London Mathematical Society between 1895 and 1910, and president for 1912–1913.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Love, Augustus Edward Hough 1863 births 1940 deaths People from Weston-super-Mare 19th-century British mathematicians 20th-century British mathematicians Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of The Queen's College, Oxford Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy People educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School Royal Medal winners Second Wranglers De Morgan Medallists Geodynamics

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References