|
|
|
|
|
James LighthillSir James Lighthill (born Michael James Lighthill) (23 January 1924 - 17 July 1998) was a British applied mathematician. He specialised in fluid dynamics, and worked at the National Physical Laboratory, Trinity College, Cambridge and between 1946 and 1959 at the University of Manchester. Lighthill then moved from Manchester to become director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. There he worked on the development of television and communications satellites, and on the development of manned spacecraft. This latter work was vital to the development of the Concorde supersonic airliner. Lighthill's early work included two dimensional aerofoil theory, and supersonic flow around solids of revolution. In addition to the dynamics of gas at high speeds he studied shock and blast waves. He is credited with founding the subject of aeroacoustics, a subject vital to the reduction of noise in jet engines. Lighthill's eighth power law states that the acoustic power radiated by a jet engine is proportional to the eighth power of the jet speed. He also founded non-linear acoustics, and showed that the same non-linear differential equations could model both flood waves in rivers and traffic flow in highways. In 1969 Lighthill took the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge (the post held by Isaac Newton) and in 1975 he wrote a book on biological applications of fluid dynamics including the dynamics of swimming and flying animals. His interest in swimming perhaps proved ultimately to be his downfall. Although he had previously swam around the Island of Sark on numerous occasions, an attempt in 1998 claimed his life. Lighthill is credited with founding the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 1964. External links References - Lighthill, Sir James, Mathematical Biofluiddynamics,
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1975, ISBN 0898710146 - Lighthill, M. J., Waves in Fluids. Cambridge University Press, 1978. ISBN 0521010454
- Lighthill, M. J. An Informal Introduction to Theoretical Fluid Mechanics. Oxford University Press, 1986, ISBN 0198536305
Lighthill, James Lighthill, James Lighthill, James
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|