Person: Love, Augustus Edward Hough
Augustus Love was an English mathematician known for his work on the theory of elasticity. He also worked on wave propagation and the structure of the Earth.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- John Love was a surgeon who, later in his career, took up an appointment as a police surgeon for the borough of Wolverhampton.
- Augustus was educated at Wolverhampton School, which he entered in 1874, but there he failed to show the brilliance which he was to show later in his life.
- These years were highly productive ones during which Love produced outstanding work which led to his election to the Royal Society in 1894.
- Love was appointed to the Sedleian chair of natural philosophy at Oxford in 1899.
- Love also did important work on waves.
- An expert on spherical harmonics, Love discovered the existence of waves of short wavelength in the Earth's crust.
- The ideas in this work are still much used in geophysical research and the short wavelength earthquake waves he discovered are called 'Love waves'.
- 'Love waves' have proved of considerable importance in the hands of later investigators, who have been able to infer, from their application to seismograms, indications of the thickness of the upper layer of the earth's crust.
Born 17 April 1863, Weston-super-Mare, England. Died 5 June 1940, Oxford, England.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin England
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
