![Wilhelmine Dorothea Koren Bjerknes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Wilhelmine_Dorothea_Koren_Bjerknes.jpg)
Carl Anton Bjerknes ( , ; 24 October 1825 – 20 March 1903) was a
Norwegian mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
. Bjerknes' earlier work was in pure mathematics, but he is principally known for his studies in
hydrodynamics
In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and ...
.
Biography
Carl Anton Bjerknes was born in
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
, Norway. His father was Abraham Isaksen Bjerknes and his mother Elen Birgitte Holmen. Bjerknes studied
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
at the
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
, and after that
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
and the
University of Paris
, image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of Arms
, latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis
, motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin)
, mottoeng = Here and a ...
. In 1866 he held a chair for
applied mathematics
Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...
and in 1869 for mathematics. Over a fifty-year time period, Bjerknes taught mathematics at the
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
and at the military college.
A pupil of
Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet,
Gabriel Lamé and
Augustin-Louis Cauchy
Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (, ; ; 21 August 178923 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He ...
Bjerknes worked for the rest of his life in the field of
hydrodynamics
In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids—liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and ...
. He tried to explain the
electrodynamics of
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...
by hydrodynamical analogies and similarly he proposed a
mechanical explanation of gravitation. Although he did not succeed in his attempts to explain all those things, his findings in the field of hydrodynamics were important. His experiments were shown at the first
International Exposition of Electricity in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
that ran from August 15, 1881 through to November 15, 1881 at the Palais de l'Industrie on the Champs-Élysées and at the Scandinavian naturalist meeting in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
.
John Charles Fields
John Charles Fields, FRS, FRSC (May 14, 1863 – August 9, 1932) was a Canadian mathematician and the founder of the Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics.
Career
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, to a leather shop owner, Fields ...
the founder of the
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
for outstanding achievement in mathematics had this to say about the great minds that Norway had produced since it gained independence:
International Exposition of Electricity
(W)hen at the 1881 Paris International Electric Exhibition, he (Carl Anton) and his son (
Vilhelm Bjerknes), demonstrated instruments that reproduced hydrodynamic analogies, few observers could ignore these baffling phenomena. Such celebrities as
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...
,
Gustav Kirchhoff,
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), the Siemens brothers, and the
Marquis of Salisbury visited the small Norwegian exhibit booth and watched with amazement as a system of pulsating spheres and similar devices appeared to reproduce well-known electric and magnetic phenomena. For many observers the Bjerknes apparatus seemed to illustrate that the mysterious nature of electricity could perhaps be revealed. British observers allegedly exclaimed, "Maxwell should have seen this!" Of the eleven diplômes d'honneur, seven went to non-French exhibitors, including
Werner Siemens
Ernst Werner Siemens (von Siemens from 1888; ; ; 13 December 1816 – 6 December 1892) was a German electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist. Siemens's name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens. He foun ...
,
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
,
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Te ...
and William Thomson. Professor Carl Anton Bjerknes, representing Norway, joined their ranks.
Family
On June 30, 1859, after returning from his foreign travels, Bjerknes married Wilhelmine Dorothea Koren (10.11.1837–21.10.1923) whose father was a minister in the Church in West Norway. His son Norwegian physicist and meteorologist,
Vilhelm Bjerknes continued the work of his father.
Death
Bjerknes died suddenly of
a stroke on 20 March 1903 at the age of 77.
["To some it may appear strange that the son of C. A. Bjerknes should have been chosen to deliver the commemorative address summing up the life-work of his father. As a matter of fact, however, no other choice could have been made. In his scientific research Bjerknes worked apart from others. His only confidant and colleague was his son. So in the monograph before us the son, after sketching his father's early life, traces step by step the development of the Hydrodynamic Action at a Distance from the days when its author was a pupil under Cauchy, Lamé, and Dirichlet until the last manuscript, written two or three days before his sudden death by apoplexy. Bjerknes left about 40,000 pages of closely written manuscript, accumulated since the early seventies. So great was his love of perfection, his striving for quality rather than quantity that little of all this had been published until the appearance of the Hydrodynamische Fernkrâfte and that which remains is accompanied by a request that nothing be printed without the most careful revision. It is a rare and noble sight to see men like ]Josiah Willard Gibbs
Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...
and Bjerknes who are possessed of a spirit of research apart from the common desire to rush into print." — Edmund Beecher Wilson, ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society'', Vol.X, October 1903 to July 1904
Selected works
* ''Niels Henrik Abel. En skildring af hans liv og videnskabelige virksomhed'' (Stockholm. 1880)
References
Other sources
*
*
*
Author profilein the database
zbMATH
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bjerknes, Carl Anton
1825 births
1903 deaths
Norwegian physicists
19th-century Norwegian mathematicians
Scientists from Oslo
Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters
Carl Anton
Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala
Norwegian mathematicians