Olov Hilding Faxén (29 March 1892 – 1 June 1970) was a Swedish

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 ca ...

who was primarily active within

mechanics Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects ...

. Faxén received his doctorate in 1921 at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance durin ...

with the thesis ''Einwirkung der Gefässwände auf den Widerstand gegen die Bewegung einer kleinen Kugel in einer zähen Flüssigkeit'' ("Influence of the container walls on the resistance against movement by a small ball in a viscous fluid"). One of his contributions was to formulate

Faxén's law In fluid dynamics, Faxén's laws relate a sphere's velocity \mathbf and angular velocity \mathbf to the forces, torque, stresslet and flow it experiences under low Reynolds number (creeping flow) conditions. First law Faxen's first law was introdu ...

, which is a correction to Stokes' law for the friction on spherical objects in a

viscous The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the inte ...

fluid In physics, a fluid is a liquid, gas, or other material that continuously deforms (''flows'') under an applied shear stress, or external force. They have zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, are substances which cannot resist any shea ...

, valid in the case when the object moves close to a wall of the container. This was a problem previously treated by Carl Wilhelm Oseen (1910) and

Horace Lamb Sir Horace Lamb (27 November 1849 – 4 December 1934)R. B. Potts,, '' Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Volume 5, MUP, 1974, pp 54–55. Retrieved 5 Sep 2009 was a British applied mathematician and author of several influential texts o ...

(1911), but incompletely solved. After the death of Ivar Fredholm, Faxén temporarily upheld the chair in mathematical physics at Stockholm University College, before Oskar Klein was made the new professor. Faxén then served as professor at Chalmers Institute of Technology, first in mathematics from 1930 and then in mechanics and mathematics 1934–1935. In 1935, Faxén was appointed professor of mechanics at the

Royal Institute of Technology The KTH Royal Institute of Technology ( sv, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, lit=Royal Institute of Technology), abbreviated KTH, is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH conducts research and education in engineering and technol ...

in Stockholm, where he remained until his retirement in 1958. Together with the Norwegian physicist Johan Holtsmark, Faxén published a work in 1927 about scattering of

electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary partic ...

s in gases.H. Faxén und J.P. Holtsmark, ''Beitrag zur Theorie des Durchganges langsamer Elektronen durch Gase'', Zeitschrift für Physik 45, 307–324 (1927). Here they introduced a new, mathematical method based upon partial waves. This is now standard and described in almost every modern book on

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

. In 1948, Faxén was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Faxen, Hilding Swedish physicists Uppsala University alumni Academic staff of Stockholm University Academic staff of the Chalmers University of Technology Academic staff of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1892 births 1970 deaths Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala