Albert Edward Green (11 November 1912,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
– 12 August 1999) was a British applied mathematician and research scientist in theoretical and applied mechanics.
Biography
Green studied mathematics at
Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...
, where he attended lectures by
Sydney Goldstein
Sydney Goldstein FRS (3 December 1903, Kingston upon Hull – 22 January 1989, Cambridge, MA) was a British mathematician noted for his contribution to fluid dynamics. He is described as: "... one of those who most influenced progress in fluid d ...
,
Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lumin ...
and
G. I. Taylor
Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM FRS FRSE (7 March 1886 – 27 June 1975) was a British physicist and mathematician, and a major figure in fluid dynamics and wave theory. His biographer and one-time student, George Batchelor, described him as ...
. In 1932 he attained a first in the first part of the
Tripos
At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mathe ...
examinations in mathematics and in 1934 was Wrangler in the second part. After his first very promising publications he was named the 1936 Fellow of Jesus College, received the 1936
Smith Prize
The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the n ...
, and in 1937 received his PhD under Taylor. With Taylor he published in the 1930s and 1940s a series of works on stress distribution in anisotropic plates. In 1939 Green became a lecturer at the
University of Durham
Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...
and then in 1948 a professor of applied mathematics at the
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick univer ...
(at that time called King´s College of the University of Durham). In Newcastle he chaired the mathematical faculty with
Werner Wolfgang Rogosinski
Werner Wolfgang Rogosinski FRS (24 September 1894 – 23 July 1964) was a German (later British) mathematician.
Life
Rogosinski was born in Breslau, into a Jewish family. His father, Hermann Rogosinski was Counsel in Wroclaw. Rogosinski studi ...
and then alone after Rogosinki's retirement in 1959. From 1959 to 1962 Green was also Dean
of the Faculty of Science. He was from 1968
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 ...
at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
(where the elasticity theorist
Augustus Edward Hough Love
Augustus Edward Hough Love FRS (17 April 1863, Weston-super-Mare – 5 June 1940, Oxford), often known as A. E. H. Love, was a mathematician famous for his work on the mathematical theory of elasticity. He also worked on wave propagation and hi ...
was one of his predecessors). In 1977 Green retired as professor emeritus.
In 1955/1956 and 1963/1964 he was a visiting professor at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
(working with
Ronald S. Rivlin). As a frequent visiting professor at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, he worked with
Paul M. Naghdi.
Green was in his lifetime one the U.K.'s leading scientists, who in his career increasingly concerned himself with linear and after World War II nonlinear elasticity theory. In elasticity theory he worked with Wolfgang Zerna, who was in Newcastle in 1948/1949 as part of an academic exchange programme between the U.K. and Germany. (Subsequently, Zerna was a professor in Hannover.) With Rivlin, Green published some of the first works on the mechanics of materials with memory. From the mid-1960s he primarily deal with the thermodynamics of continua, the theory of elastic-plastic continua (with Naghdi) and various hydrodynamic problems (such as jets in
ideal fluid
In physics, a perfect fluid is a fluid that can be completely characterized by its rest frame mass density \rho_m and ''isotropic'' pressure ''p''. Real fluids are "sticky" and contain (and conduct) heat. Perfect fluids are idealized models in whi ...
s). The Green-Naghdi theory of water waves, as named by
R. Cengiz Ertekin, is one of the outstanding contributions of the close collaboration of Green and
Paul M. Naghdi.
Green received honorary scientific doctorates: in 1943 from the University of Cambridge, in 1968 from the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, in 1969 from the
University of Durham
Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...
, and in 1977 from the
National University of Ireland
The National University of Ireland (NUI) ( ga, Ollscoil na hÉireann) is a federal university system of ''constituent universities'' (previously called ''university college, constituent colleges'') and ''recognised colleges'' set up under t ...
. In 1958 he was made Fellow of 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 ...
. In 1974 he received the
Timoshenko Medal The Timoshenko Medal is an award given annually by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to an individual
"in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of applied mechanics."
The Timoshenko Medal, widely regarded as th ...
and in 1983 the
Von Karman Medal
The Theodore von Karman Medal in Engineering Mechanics is awarded annually to an individual in recognition of his distinguished achievement in engineering mechanics, applicable to any branch of civil engineering. This award was established and end ...
.
In 1939, he married Gwendoline May Rudston.
Works
*with Wolfgang Zerna: ''Theoretical Elasticity'', Clarendon Press, Oxford 1954, 2nd edn. 1968
Dover reprint, 1992, 2012*with J. E. Adkins: ''Large elastic deformations and nonlinear continuum mechanics'', Clarendon Press, Oxford 1960,
2nd edn. 1970
Sources
*P. Chadwic
''Albert Edward Green'' Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society, 2001
*Paul M. Naghdi, A. J. M. Spencer, A. H. England (eds.) ''Nonlinear elasticity and theoretical mechanics. In Honour of A. E. Green'', Oxford University Press 1994
See also
*
Taylor–Green vortex
In fluid dynamics, the Taylor–Green vortex is an unsteady flow of a decaying vortex, which has an exact closed form solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in Cartesian coordinates. It is named after the British physicist and ma ...
References
External links
*
Green: Reflections on 40 years in mechanics, Timoshenko Medal Acceptance SpeechNote: In the paragraph on the International Congress of Applied Mechanics, the misspelling "Beizeno" occurs — this refers to the
Dutch mechanician Biezeno.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Albert Edward
20th-century British mathematicians
Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge
Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy
Fellows of Jesus College, Cambridge
Fellows of the Royal Society
Academics of Newcastle University
1912 births
1999 deaths
Fluid dynamicists