Richard V. Southwell

Richard Vynne Southwell (born: Norwich 1888 , died 1970) was an English mathematician who specialized in applied mechanics. He studied in Cambridge, and was a Trinity College Fellow. During WWI, he was in the Royal Naval Air Service. After the war, he worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, then at the National Physical Laboratory (1920-1925). In 1925, he returned to Cambridge University as a mathematics lecturer. In 1929, he became a professor of engineering at Oxford University. In 1942, he became rector of Imperial College. He retired in 1948.

As a scientist, Southwell developed relaxation methods for solving partial differential equations in engineeringand theoretical physics in the 1930 and the 1940s. The equations had first to be discretized by the finite difference methods. Then, the values of the function of the grids would have to be iteratively adjusted so thatthe discretized equation would be satisfied. At the time, digital computers did not exist, and the computations had to be done by hand. Southwell developed various techniques to speed up the calculations. For instance, in 1935, he used multiple grids for that purpose, a technique which would later be elaborated into the multigrid method.

* Professor at University of Oxford (1925)
* Fellow Royal Society (1925)
* WORCESTER REED WARNER medal- ASME (1941)
* Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1943)
* Timoshenko Medal (1959)

Publications

* "Stress Calculation in Frameworks by the method of relaxation of constraints" Proc. Roy. Soc. A 151, 56 (1935); Proc. Roy. Soc. A 153, 41 (1935).
* "Relaxation methods in engineering science : a treatise on approximate computation" (Oxford Univ. Press - 1940)
* "An Introduction to the Theory of Elasticity for Engineers and Physicists", 2nd ed. London: (Oxford University Press, 1941)
* "Relaxation Methods in Theoretical Physics, a continuation of the treatise, Relaxation methods in engineering science" (Oxford University Press - 1946)

References

* Derman G. Christopherson "Richard Vynne Southwell. 1888-1970" Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 18, pp. 549-565, (1972).
* A. O. Demuren "Application of Multigrid Methods to solve Navier-Stokes Equations" [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900004686_1990004686.pdf NASA Technical Memorandum no. 102359] (1989)

External links

* [http://www.imperial.ac.uk/centenary/timeline/1940.shtml page on the centenary of Imperial college with a short biography of R. V. Southwell]
* [http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/RichaVyn.html Biography in Portuguese (Brasil)]
* [http://www.ma.man.ac.uk/~higham/talks/talk05_early-hist.pdf Early Numerical Linear Algebra in the UK]