Carl Anton Bjerknes

Carl Anton Bjerknes (* October 24, 1825 in Christiania, Norway, † March 20, 1903 in Oslo) was a Norwegian mathematician and physicist.

His father was Abraham Isaksen Bjerknes, his mother Elen Birgitte Holmen. At the University of Oslo Bjerknes first studied mining, thereafter to study mathematics at the University of Göttingen and Paris. In 1866 he was awarded in Oslo a professor of applied mathematics and 1869 for pure mathematics.

Through the lectures of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, turned out Bjerknes occupied the rest of his life with Hydromechanics. He tried to justify by hydro-mechanical analogies both James Clerk Maxwell's electrodynamics as well as to create a mechanical explanation of gravitation. Although he did not reach these goals, its knowledge obtained hydro mechanics were significant.

His son Vilhelm Bjerknes led his work continued in part.