- Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
Infobox Scientist
name = Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
image_width = 250px
caption = Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
birth_date =7 March 1886
birth_place =St. John's Wood ,London
death_date =27 June 1975
death_place =Cambridge
residence =
citizenship =
nationality = flag|United Kingdom
ethnicity =
field =Physics
Mathematics
work_institutions =
alma_mater =Trinity College, Cambridge
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for =Fluid dynamics
Wave theory
prizes =Knight Bachelor Copley Medal Order of Merit
religion =
footnotes = Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM (7 March 1886 -27 June 1975 ) was aphysicist ,mathematician and expert onfluid dynamics andwave theory . He has been described as "one of the greatest physical scientists of the 20th century".Fact|date=November 2007Biography
Born in
St. John's Wood ,London , his father was an artist, and his mother, Margaret Boole, came from a family of mathematicians (his aunt wasAlicia Boole Stott and grandfatherGeorge Boole ). Taylor followed in the latter's footsteps reading mathematics atTrinity College, Cambridge . As a child he had become fascinated by science after attending theRoyal Institution Christmas Lectures and had performed experiments using paint rollers and sticky-tape.His first paper was on
quanta showing that Young's slit diffraction experiment produced fringes even with feeble light sources such that less than onephoton was present at a time. He followed this up with work onshock wave s, winning aSmith's Prize . In 1910 he was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, and the following year he was appointed to ameteorology post, becoming Reader in Dynamical Meteorology. His work onturbulence in the atmosphere led to the publication of "Turbulent motion in fluids," which won him theAdams Prize in 1915.In 1913 Taylor served as a
meteorologist aboard the Ice Patrol vessel "Scotia", where his observations formed the basis of his later work on a theoretical model of turbulent mixing of the air. At the outbreak ofWorld War I , he was sent to theRoyal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough to apply his knowledge to aircraft design, working, amongst other things, on the stress on propeller shafts. Not content to simply sit back and do the science, he also learned to fly aeroplanes and make parachute jumps.After the war Taylor returned to Trinity and worked on an application of turbulent flow to
oceanography . He also worked on the problem of bodies passing through a rotating fluid. In 1923 he was appointed to aRoyal Society research professorship as a Yarrow Research Professor. This enabled him to stop teaching which he had been doing for the previous four years and which he both disliked and had no great aptitude for. It was in this period that he did his most wide-ranging work on the mechanics of fluids and solids including research on the deformation of crystalline materials which followed from his war work at Farnborough. He also produced another major contribution toturbulent flow , where he introduced a new approach through a statistical study of velocity fluctuations.In 1934, Taylor, roughly contemporarily with
Michael Polanyi andEgon Orowan , realised that the plastic deformation ofductile materials could be explained in terms of the theory ofdislocation s developed byVito Volterra in 1905. The insight was critical in developing the modern science ofsolid mechanics .During
World War II Taylor again worked on applications of his expertise to military problems such as the propagation ofblast wave s, studying both waves in air andunderwater explosion s. These skills were put to the service of scientists at Los Alamos when Taylor was sent to the United States as part of the British delegation to theManhattan project between 1944 and 1945. In 1944 he also received his knighthood and theCopley Medal from theRoyal Society .Taylor continued his research after the end of the War serving on the
Aeronautical Research Committee and working on the development ofsupersonic aircraft. Though officially retiring in 1952 he continued researching for the next twenty years, concentrating on problems that could be attacked using simple equipment. This led to such advances as a method for measuring the second coefficient ofviscosity . Taylor devised an incompressible liquid with separated gas bubbles suspended in it. The dissipation of the gas in the liquid during expansion was a consequence of the shear viscosity of the liquid. Thus the bulk viscosity could easily be calculated. Other late work included the longitudinal dispersion in flow in tubes, movement through porous surfaces and the dynamics of sheets of liquids.Aspects of Taylor's life often found expression in his work; his overriding interest in the movement of air and water, and by extension his studies of the movement of unicellular marine creatures and the weather, were related to his lifelong love of
sailing . In the 1930s he invented the 'CQR' anchor which was both stronger and more manageable than any in use and which was used for all sorts of small craft includingseaplane s.His final research paper was published in 1969, when he was 83. In it he resumed his interest in electrical activity in
thunderstorm s, as jets of conducting liquid motivated by electrical fields. The cone from which such jets are observed is called theTaylor cone for his namesake. In the same year Taylor was appointed to theOrder of Merit . He suffered a stroke in 1972 which effectively put an end to his work; he died in Cambridge in 1975.ee also
*
Taylor cone
*Taylor dispersion
*Taylor number
*Taylor vortex
*Taylor-Couette flow
*Rayleigh–Taylor instability
*Taylor-Proudman theorem
*Taylor-Green vortex References
* "The Life and Legacy of G. I. Taylor", by
George Batchelor ,Cambridge University Press , 1994 ISBN 0-521-46121-9
* Taylor, Geoffrey Ingram, Sir, "Scientific papers". Edited by G.K. Batchelor,Cambridge University Press 1958–71. (Vol. 1. Mechanics of solids — Vol. 2. Meteorology, oceanography, and turbulent flow — Vol. 3. Aerodynamics and the mechanics of projectiles and explosions — Vol. 4. Mechanics of fluids: miscellaneous papers).
*Batchelor, G. K., "Geoffrey Ingram Taylor. 7 March 1886 – 27 June 1975," "Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society", Vol. 22, pages 565–633 (November 1976).External links
*
* A [http://modular.mit.edu:8080/ramgen/ifluids/Low_Reynolds_Number_Flow.rm Real Media stream] of Taylor's Hydrodynamic demo courtesy of the folks atMIT
* [http://www.deas.harvard.edu/brenner/taylor/ Classical Physics Through the Work of GI Taylor] . Course given on Taylor's work
* [http://www.deas.harvard.edu/brenner/taylor/physic_today/taylor.htm Article on the course above]
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