George Green

George Green (* July 14, 1793 in Sneinton ( gespr Snenton ), † May 31 1841 in Nottingham ) was a British mathematician and physicist. He was the co-founder of the potential theory and the theory of electromagnetism. The Green function and the Green's formulas also go back to him.

Greens father, also George Green, came from Nottingham and was a wealthy baker, designer, builder and owner of the after named him Green's Windmill ( Green's Windmill ), then erected outside Sneintons on a hill with state of the art. After closure in 1860, decay, imminent demolition it is since 1985 again windmahlfähig and now a science center and Memorial ( Green's Windmill and Science Centre ) famous for Sneintons son, to whom it owes its preservation.

Life

George attended school for only two years and then worked in the mill of his father from 1802 until his death in 1829. Green led the milling business continued successfully and had 1831 chase a result of new reform laws angry crowd of his mill with a musket. He was self-taught widely and studied in their own mill, the foundations of physical laws. It is not known exactly how it 's comprehensive mathematical foundations developed itself, which made his later works, but it is known that he attended the Nottingham Subscription Library ( Nottingham Subscription Library) since 1823, the over copies of works by Pierre -Simon Laplace's like " Mécanique céleste " ( " celestial mechanics " ) decreed that the time had studied 30 - year-old. It is believed that John Toplis, director of Nottingham private grammar school ( Nottingham High School, founded in 1513) from 1806 to 1819 and translator of scientific works, had an influence on George Green. 1828 published Green his first book An Essay on the application of mathematical analysis to the theories of electricity and magnetism ( An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism ), in which he, the potential function and the concept of the Green's function introduced for the solution of partial differential equations and proves the theorem of Green. The essay was made ​​about 50 subscribers to the library accessible, but read only by a few, especially not by the national and international audience, with the exception of Sir Edward Bromhead, a mathematician studied. This brought him in academic circles. At the age of 40 years, Green went to the University of Cambridge in 1833 and graduated in 1837 with honors. In addition, he worked in his mill and made a small fortune with it. He wrote works on acoustics, optics, and hydrodynamics, and had at the University of a successful but short career. Four years after his graduation he died in Nottingham on flu. His work, which was on its way to international recognition came with his death in obscurity and was only rediscovered in 1846 by Lord Kelvin.

When Albert Einstein visited his grave in 1930, he expressed his admiration for the scientist to little-known and noticed that George Green was his time more than twenty years ahead.

Green honor is also known as Green- elasticity in continuum mechanics hyperelasticity. It was also a degree of stretch, the Green's tensor, named after him.

The pioneers of quantum field theory, Freeman Dyson and Julian Schwinger Green acknowledged as the inventor of the method of Green's function, which play a fundamental role in the formalism of quantum field theory propagators.

Works

  • An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism. Nottingham, 1828 reprints.: William Thomson ( ed.): An essay on the application of mathematical analysis to the theories of electricity and magnetism. Introductory notices. Journ. f pure u angew Math 39 (1850), 73-89.
  • William Thomson ( ed.): An essay on the application of mathematical analysis to the theories of electricity and magnetism. General preliminary results. Journ. f pure u angew Math 44 (1852 ), 356-74.
  • William Thomson ( ed.): An essay on the application of mathematical analysis to the theories of electricity and magnetism. Application of the Preceding results to the theory of electricity. Journ. f pure u angew Math 47 (1854 ), 161-221.
  • In NM Ferrers (ed. ): Mathematical papers of the late George Green ... London, Macmillan, 1871 UMich scans.. Reprint Chelsea 1970
  • A three-volume edition of his writings has been published by the George Green Memorial Fund.
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