1. James Lighthill was born to Ernest Balzar Lichtenberg and Marjorie Holmes: an Alsatian mining engineer who changed his name to Lighthill in 1917, and the daughter of an engineer.
17 Facts About James Lighthill
1. 2.
James Lighthill specialised in fluid dynamics, and worked at the National Physical Laboratory at Trinity.
3.
James Lighthill then moved from Manchester to become director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough.
4.
In 1955, together with Gerald B Whitham, Lighthill set out the first comprehensive theory of kinematic waves, with a multitude of applications, prime among them fluid flow and traffic flow.
5.
James Lighthill is credited with founding the subject of aeroacoustics, a subject vital to the reduction of noise in jet engines.
6.
James Lighthill founded non-linear acoustics, and showed that the same non-linear differential equations could model both flood waves in rivers and traffic flow in highways.
7.
James Lighthill founded the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 1964, alongside Professor Sir Bryan Thwaites.
8.
In 1983 James Lighthill was awarded the Ludwig Prandtl Ring from the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Luft- und Raumfahrt for "outstanding contribution in the field of aerospace engineering".
9.
James Lighthill was elected FRS in 1953 and FRAS in 1961.
10.
James Lighthill was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1964, and the Copley Medal, of the Royal Society, posthumously, in 1998.
11.
The James Lighthill building at the University of Manchester and James Lighthill House are named in his honour.
12.
James Lighthill was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1970.
13.
In 1971 James Lighthill was made knight in the New Year's Honours.
14.
In 1976, James Lighthill was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of at least nine such foreign academies to elect him, including the French and Russian.
15.
James Lighthill was made an honorary member of many bodies, and received twenty-four honorary doctorates.
16.
James Lighthill was invited to give, and delivered, many prize and plenary lectures.
17.
James Lighthill died in the water in 1998 when the mitral valve in his heart ruptured while he was swimming round the island of Sark, a feat which he had accomplished many times before.