- Thomas George Cowling
Thomas George Cowling (
June 17 1906 –June 16 1990 ) was an Englishastronomer .Cowling was born in
Hackney, London and studiedmathematics atBrasenose College, Oxford from 1924 to 1930. From 1928 to 1930 he worked underEdward Arthur Milne . In 1929, Milne had no problems left to ask his student to work on and appealed to Sydney Chapman, who proposed that they work on an article on which he was working that dealt with theSun 'smagnetic field . Cowling found an error in the paper that invalidated Chapman's results. After obtaining his doctorate, Chapman proposed that they work together.In 1933 Cowling wrote an article, "The magnetic field of sunspots".
Joseph Larmor had worked in this area, arguing that sunspots regenerate themselves through adynamo effect. Cowling showed that Larmor's explanation was incorrect. His article assured him of a good reputation in the field ofastrophysics .During the 1930s, Cowling also worked on stellar structure involving radiation and convection, at the same time as
Ludwig Biermann but independently of him. He constructed a model of star with a convective core and radiative envelope, named the Cowling model by Chandrasekhar. He also studiedmagnetic field s within stars and classified the modes of non-radial oscillation of the body of a star, the basis of the field ofhelioseismology .Wilfried Schröder has discussed the relationship between Cowling, Chapman and SAlfven in a paper " Changes of theories of aurora borealis " (Gerlands Beiträge zur Geophysik, 1988). Schröder has had long time discussion with Cowling in this subject.Cowling won the
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1956 and theBruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1985. He was also awarded theHughes Medal two days before his death.External links
* [http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Cowling/index.html Bruce Medal page]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0116//0000229.000.html Awarding of RAS gold medal]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ARA+A/0023//0000001.000.html Autobiographical article]Obituary
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/QJRAS/0032//0000201.000.html QJRAS 32 (1991) 201]
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