David John Acheson (born 1946) is a British

applied 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 One ...

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship St ...

. He was educated at

Highgate School Highgate School, formally Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate, is an English co-educational, fee-charging, independent day school, founded in 1565 in Highgate, London, England. It educates over 1,400 pupils in three sections – Highgate ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

(BSc Mathematics and Physics, 1967) and the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...

(PhD, 1971). He was appointed a Fellow in Mathematics at

in 1977 and became an Emeritus Fellow in 2008. He served as president of the

Mathematical Association The Mathematical Association is a professional society concerned with mathematics education in the UK. History It was founded in 1871 as the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching and renamed to the Mathematical Association in ...

from 2010 to 2011. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the

in 2013. His early research was on geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics, beginning with the discovery in 1972 of a magnetic 'field gradient' instability in rotating fluids. In 1976, he discovered the first examples of wave over-reflection (i.e. reflection coefficient greater than unity) in a stable system. In 1978 his research focused on magnetic fields and differential rotation in stars, with new results on

magnetic buoyancy Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particle ...

, the Taylor instability, Goldreich-Schubert instability, and

magnetorotational instability The magnetorotational instability (MRI) is a fluid instability that causes an accretion disk orbiting a massive central object to become turbulent. It arises when the angular velocity of a conducting fluid in a magnetic field decreases as the d ...

. In 1992 he discovered the 'upside-down pendulums theorem' (which is very loosely connected with the

Indian Rope Trick The Indian rope trick is a magic trick said to have been performed in and around India during the 19th century. Sometimes described as "the world’s greatest illusion", it reputedly involved a magician, a length of rope, and one or more boy ass ...

Books

* ''Elementary Fluid Dynamics'' (1990) * ''From Calculus to Chaos'' (1997) * ''1089 and All That'' (2002) * ''The Calculus Story: A Mathematical Adventure'' (2017) * ''The Wonder Book of Geometry: A Mathematical Story'' (2020) * ''The Spirit of Mathematics: Algebra and All That'' (2023)

References

1946 births Living people People educated at Highgate School Alumni of King's College London Alumni of the University of East Anglia Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford Place of birth missing (living people) 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Mathematics writers Fluid dynamicists British non-fiction writers 20th-century British writers 21st-century British writers 20th-century British male writers Male non-fiction writers {{UK-mathematician-stub