Person: Lamb, Horace

Horace Lamb wrote important texts and made important contributions to applied mathematics, in particular to acoustics and fluid dynamics.

She was kindly lady but nevertheless brought Horace up in a severe Puritan manner.
Horace was educated at the Grammar School in Stockport.
In 1866, when Horace was only 17, he won a scholarship to read classics at Queen's College, Cambridge but declined the scholarship to spend a year studying at Owens College, Manchester.
It was at Owens College that Lamb's interests turned firmly towards mathematics so that, when he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, the following year it was to study mathematics.
Lamb was taught by Stokes and Maxwell at Cambridge and graduated as Second Wrangler in 1872 (meaning that he was second in the ranked list of those students awarded a First Class degree).
Adelaide was extremely fortunate in their choice of Lamb as their first professor of mathematics and he rapidly built the reputation of the mathematics department there.
Lamb left Australia in 1885, accepting a chair at Victoria University in England (now the University of Manchester).
Lamb held the chair at Manchester until 1920 when, at the age of 70, he retired and moved to Cambridge.
Lamb's texts had a major role on teaching in British universities for many years.
Lamb wrote books in addition to those mentioned above, including Infinitesimal Calculus (1897), Dynamical Theory of Sound (1910), and Higher Mechanics (1920).

Born 29 November 1849, Stockport, England. Died 4 December 1934, Cambridge, England.

View full biography at MacTutor

Applied Maths, Origin England, Physics

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