Person: Bjerknes, Carl

Carl Bjerknes was a Norwegian mathematician and physicist who worked in pure mathematics as well as hydrodynamics.

In 1844 Bjerknes entered the University of Christiania (now Oslo), where he studied mining.
The oldest school of mines in the world, founded 1757, was in the town and Bjerknes worked there from 1848 until 1852.
For two years, from 1852 to 1854, Bjerknes taught mathematics in a school but an award of a scholarship enabled him to study mathematics at Göttingen and Paris in 1856-57.
Dirichlet lectured to Carl Bjerknes in Göttingen on hydrodynamics and Bjerknes became so interested in that topic that he spent the rest of his life researching in that area.
They had two other sons, Carl who became a sailor and died in a tropical cyclone, and Ernst who became an engineer.
In particular one of their grandsons Jacob Bjerknes, Vilhelm Bjerknes's son, also achieved great fame as a scientist.
Despite the difficulties under which he worked, Bjerknes produced outstanding results and was promoted to Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Christiania in 1866.
Let us examine a little this work which assumed such a dominant role in Bjerknes' life.
Bjerknes discovered analogies between the way bodies could move through a frictionless fluid and certain electromagnetic effects.
The treatise was entitled Hydrodynamic action at a distance according to C A Bjerknes's theory.

Born 24 October 1825, Christiania (now Oslo), Norway. Died 20 March 1903, Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway.

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Origin Norway

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O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive