Horace Lamb & Osborne Reynolds: Remarkable Mancunians ... and their Interactions

21st Fluid Mechanics Conference

物理学;力学

Launder, B.E.^1

School of MACE, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom^1

关键词: Applied mathematics;    Manchester;    Professional life;    Reynold save raging;    Reynolds;    Royal society;    University of Adelaide;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/530/1/012001/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/530/1/012001

学科分类：力学，机械学

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

The paper provides glimpses into the professional lives of arguably, the two outstanding fluid mechanicists of their time who were simultaneously professors at Owens College, Manchester. Their interactions with each other were sometimes amicable but, equally, sometimes testy and their views on their common professional subject differed radically. Reynolds was appointed to the Chair of Engineering in 1868 at the age of 25 against strong competition while Horace Lamb, graduating a decade after Reynolds, was appointed as the inaugural Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Adelaide where he stayed for nine years before being appointed to a chair at Owens College in 1885. Among their various interactions the most significant arose from Reynolds' famous "Reynolds averaging" paper. That was sent for review by Lamb who was critical of the paper but finally recommended that a revised version be published since Reynolds had essentially invented the subject. Reynolds, in his turn, criticised Lamb's patronizing reference to engineers' approach to fluid mechanics in a draft revision of his book Hydrodynamics. Nevertheless, on Reynolds' death in 1912, it was Lamb who attended his funeral on behalf of the University and the Royal Society and who later wrote a moving, much cited obituary of him.