15 Facts About Horace Lamb

Sir Horace Lamb was a British applied mathematician and author of several influential texts on classical physics, among them Hydrodynamics and Dynamical Theory of Sound.

John Horace Lamb was a foreman in a cotton mill who had gained some distinction by the invention of an improvement to spinning machines, he died when his son was a child.

Lamb's mother married again, and soon afterwards Horace went to live with his strict maternal aunt, Mrs Holland.

Since Horace Lamb's inclination was to pursue a career in engineering, he chose to decline the offer, and instead worked for a year at the Owens College in nearby Manchester, as a means of developing his mathematical proficiency further.

An acknowledged lecturer of high quality, Horace Lamb prospered under the guidance of Barker, and was elected to a minor scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Horace Lamb was elected both a Fellow and a tutor in the college.

However, Horace Lamb soon became romantically involved with Elizabeth Foot, sister-in-law to his former headmaster, and, since the conditions of his position at Trinity stipulated that he should hold it only so long as he was unmarried, he was compelled, in 1875, to resign and continue his work elsewhere.

Horace Lamb was instrumental in the establishment of the academic and administrative structure of the university, and lectured in pure and applied mathematics, giving practical demonstrations in physics.

Horace Lamb's deftly rendered and original A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of the Motions of Fluids was first published in 1878.

In 1883, Horace Lamb published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society applying Maxwell's equations to the problem of oscillatory current flow in spherical conductors, an early examination of what was later to be known as the skin effect.

Horace Lamb was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884.

Horace Lamb was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at Owens College, Manchester, in 1885 and which became the Beyer Chair in 1888, a position Horace Lamb held until retirement in 1920.

Horace Lamb is known for description of special waves in thin solid layers.

Horace Lamb died in 1934 and was buried at the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his wife.

Horace Lamb was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, was twice vice-president, received its Royal Medal in 1902 and, its highest honour, the Copley Medal in 1924.