The spirited horse, the engineer, and the mathematician: water waves in nineteenth-century hydrodynamics
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The spirited horse, the engineer, and the mathematician: water waves in nineteenth-century hydrodynamics
zbMATH Open document ID: 1046.01007
author: Olivier Darrigol
published in: Archive for History of Exact Sciences
publication date: 2004-02-19T00:00:00Z
review text: The main purpose of this article is to exemplify the symbiotic evolution of mathematical analysis and physical interpretation in the 19th century. With arguments taken from the theoretical and experimental research on water waves, it is shown that the need of solving the differential equations of certain problems of physics gave rise to new mathematical tools, and that the application of these tools to other physical phenomena provided them with a physical interpretation that greatly increased their efficiency. The paper is divided into five sections: 1. The theories of waves developed by Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, and Cauchy; 2. The experiments on water waves that were executed by the naval engineer John Scott Russell in the 1830s and 1840s; 3. George B. Airy's wave theory of tides; 4. The problem of finite waves of permanent shape, as studied by Stokes, Boussinesq, and Rayleigh; 5. The application of optical and acoustic ideas of interference to the explanation of water wave phenomena.
reviewed by: Andreas Kleinert
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A55
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 76-03
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 35-03
zbMATH DE Number: 2032491
zbMATH Keywords: 19th century
zbMATH Keywords: hydrodynamics
zbMATH Keywords: water waves
zbMATH Keywords: John Scott Russell
zbMATH Keywords: George B. Airy
zbMATH Keywords: naval engineering
zbMATH Keywords: mathematical physics
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: s00407-003-0070-5
OpenAlex ID: W2014255380
DOI: 10.1007/S00407-003-0070-5
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description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2032491