Born: 23 Jan 1924
in Paris, France
Died: 17 July 1998 in Sark, Channel Islands
Sir James Lighthill was known as Michael Lighthill when he was a young
man. He was educated at Winchester College and, at the age of 15 he won
a scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge. However, he chose to wait
until he was 17 years old before entering Trinity College which he did
in 1941. He graduated with a BA in 1943, after taking a course shortened
because of World War II.
While at Cambridge, Lighthill met Nancy Dumaresq who was studying mathematics
at Newnham College. Lighthill tried to get a job in the Royal Aircraft
Establishment at Farnborough after he graduated, since Nancy already had
a job there. However, he was offered a job in the Aerodynamics Division
of the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. Lighthill married Nancy
in 1945, the year he finished his job at the National Physical Laboratory.
Lighthill was elected a fellow of Trinity College in 1945 and he held
this fellowship until 1949. In 1946 he was appointed as a Senior Lecturer
at Manchester University and there he set up a very strong fluid dynamics
group which soon dominated research in fluids. In 1950 Lighthill was promoted
to Beyer Professor of Applied Mathematics at Manchester University.
In 1959 Lighthill moved from Manchester to become director of the Royal
Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. In the early 1960s he formed links
between the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the Post Office to develop
commercial television and communications satellites. He was also involved
in plans for a manned space craft which would return to earth. His work
at this time on supersonic aircraft proved to be vital in the development
of the joint French-UK project for the Concorde supersonic passenger aircraft.
In 1953 Lighthill had been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of
London and, in 1964, he became Royal Society Research Professor attached
to Imperial College in London. Also at this time Lighthill, who had become
unhappy with the support given to applied mathematics from government
sources, founded the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, becoming
its first president in 1965-67.
In 1969 Paul Dirac retired as Lucasian professor of Mathematics at the
University of Cambridge and Lighthill was appointed to succeed him. Lighthill
held the Lucasian chair for 10 years and was proud to hold the chair once
held by Newton. He became Provost of University College London in 1979,
Stephen Hawking succeeding him as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and
Lighthill held this administrative post for 10 years until he retired
in 1989. In this post Lighthill was much involved in fund raising but,
despite a heavy administrative load, he continued his mathematical work
studying chaotic systems, methods of extracting wave energy, and human
hearing on which topic he gave the lecture Acoustic streaming in the ear
itself at a conference on fluid dynamics in biology at Seattle in 1991.
After Lighthill retired in 1989 he took on the position as chairman of
the Special Committee on the International Decade for Natural Disaster
Reduction which was sponsored by the International Council of Scientific
Unions. He held this position from 1990 to 1995. He spoke on a topic retated
to this Large scale hazards - tropical cyclones, earthquakes, risk, mathematics
at the ICIAM 95 Conference in Hamburg in 1995.
Lighthill's mathematical publications began in 1944 with publications
such as Two-dimensional supersonic aerofoil theory, The conditions behind
the trailing edge of the supersonic aerofoil, and Supersonic flow past
bodies of revolution. Crighton, in [1], describes his work during his
time at Manchester where he:-
... worked extensively on gas dynamics, including effects important at
very high speed, in his studies of ionisation processes, and the diffraction
of shock and blast waves. He also launched two major new fields in fluid
mechanics.
The first of these new fields was aeroacoustics which proved to be of
vital importance in the reduction of noise from jet engines. He introduced
this topic in two fundamental papers On sound generated aerodynamically.
I. General theory and On sound generated aerodynamically. II. Turbulence
as a source of sound which appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society
of London in 1952 and 1954 respectively. On this topic he gave Lighthill's
eighth power law which states that the acoustic power radiated by a jet
is proportional to the eighth power of the jet speed.
The second new field introduced by Lighthill during his time at Manchester
was nonlinear acoustics which [1]:- ... was initiated by a famous 100-page
article written in 1956 in honour of the 70th birthday of another great
mechanics scientist Sir Geoffrey Taylor. This field is again represented
now by many thousands of papers, and applications include kidney-stone-crushing
lithotripsy machines and, with the same mathematics, flood waves in rivers
and traffic flow on highways.
Another new field introduced by Lighthill during his time as Royal Society
Research Professor at Imperial College London was mathematical biofluiddynamics.
In his important text Mathematical biofluiddynamics (1975) he writes:-
The present author as a lifelong devotee of fluid dynamics has attempted
in this book to demonstrate that during the past two decades there has
come of age a new major division of the subject: biofluiddynamics.
The first part of the book covers topics such as: swimming and flying
of animals for high Reynolds number, and ciliary and flagellar propulsion
in low Reynolds number. It studies the theory of fish locomotion and the
flight of birds and insects. The second part of the book deals with respiratory
flow and pulse propagation. It also considers blood flow, arterial disease,
and microcirculation.
During his time as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Lighthill [1]:-
... widened his range yet further with work on control systems; on active
control of sound, or antisound; more and more on waves; on oceanography
and atmospheric dynamics, including monsoon prediction and propagation;
and on biological mechanics at the microscopic level.
Lighthill's classic text Waves in fluids was published in 1978. In it
he writes:- This book is designed as a comprehensive introduction to the
science of wave motions in fluids (that is, in liquids and gases), an
area of knowledge which forms an essential part of the dynamics of fluids,
as well as a significant part of general wave science, and, also has important
applications to the sciences of the environment and of engineering. The
[book] has two principal aims. First ... it allows an analysis in depth
of four important and representative types of waves in fluids (sound waves,
one-dimensional waves in fluids, water waves, internal waves)... At the
same time, the subject matter ... is chosen so that ... all the most generally
useful fundamental ideas of the science of waves in fluids can be developed
at length, one after another.
It should not be thought from this brief summary of Lighthill's work that
he was interested only in applications of standard mathematical techniques.
He did considerable work developing new mathematical tools particularly
in the area of Fourier analysis and generalised functions.
Lighthill certainly attracted attention in many ways such as in 1959 when
he was fined 1 pound in a very public court case in which he was accused
of jumping off a moving train. He had discovered that the train he was
on did not stop at Crewe and he persuaded the guard to have the train
slow down enough for him to jump out!
Several times he was accused for speeding in his car. Many others would
plead guilty to such an offence and pay the fine but not so Lighthill.
He would successfully contest the charge by telling the magistrate that
[1]:- ... as Lucasian Professor, he was fully seized both of the laws
of mechanics and of his duty to society not to waste energy, the latter
compelling him to desist from applying the brake on any downhill section
of road.
Swimming was one of Lighthill's joys in life. In the early 1970s he was
a main speaker at the British Theoretical Mechanics Colloquium in St Andrews
and on the afternoon off he chose not to go on the conference bus trip.
Instead he went swimming in St Andrews bay where he was spotted far out
to sea. The rescue helicopter was called out but when one of the crew
was winched down to rescue him, he refused to be rescued saying that he
was only out from a few miles swim and not in any trouble.
In 1973 Lighthill became the first person to swim round the Channel Island
of Sark [3]:-
He spent two weeks studying the hazardous currents before setting off
one sunny morning at 10am. Using a 'two-arm, two-leg backstroke, thrusting
with the arms and legs alternately' he reached Grande Grève after
two and a half hours, and shared a picnic lunch there with Lady Lighthill.
He then continued the swim, completing it by 7pm. He modestly called the
nine mile swim 'a pleasant way to see the scenery'. He repeated the achievement
half a dozen times before the accident that claimed his life.
The accident which claimed his life was another attempt to swim around
Sark. The accident was reported in [2]:- Sir James Lighthill was found
in rough seas off the island's rocky coast more than nine hours after
he stepped into the waves for the nine mile swim. ... Before his death,
he was staying at a hotel on Sark with his wife of 53 years, Nancy, and
their son. He had nearly completed his swim around the island when people
on the shore realised he had stopped swimming and alerted someone with
a boat.
Many honours from all parts of the world were bestowed on Lighthill during
his distinguished career for his outstanding mathematical contributions.
We noted above that he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London
in 1953, at the age of only 29. He was awarded the Royal Medal of the
Royal Society in 1964, then, between 1965 and 1969, he served the Society
first as its Secretary and then as its Vice-President. He also served
as president of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
from 1984 to 1988. Among other medals and prizes he was awarded are the
Gold Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1965, the Harvey Prize
for Science and Technology, Israel Institute of Technology in 1981, and
the Gold Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in
1982.
In 1961 Lighthill was elected a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958),
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (1961), the American
Philosophical Society (1970), the French Academy of Sciences (1976), the
US National Academy of Science (1976), and the US National Academy of
Engineering (1977).
Many universities have awarded Lighthill honorary doctorates including
Liverpool (1961), Leicester (1965), Strathclyde (1966), Essex (1967),
Princeton (1967), East Anglia (1968), Manchester (1968), Bath (1969),
St Andrews (1969), Surrey (1969), Cranfield (1974), Paris (1975), Aachen
(1975), Rensselaer (1980), Leeds (1983), Brown (1984), Southern California
(1984), Lisbon (1986), Rehovot (1987), London (1993), Compiègne
(1994), Kiev (1994), St Petersburg (1996), and Tallahassee (1996).
Lighthill received the Commander Order of Léopold in 1963 and was
knighted in 1971.