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Abbe to Hein
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Abbe, Cleveland (1838-1916): M.A. New York 1860.
Meteorologist. 1f
Bache, Alexander Dallas
(1806-1867): was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, a physicist becoming
superintendent of the United States Coast Survey in 1843 until his death. Sent
33 tidal letters, chiefly to Gordon, Pourtales and Whewell; he received 44
letters, chiefly from Pourtales, Gordon and Meech. http://www.lib.noaa.gov/edocs/BACHE1.htm#BACHE
Benham,
Henry Washington (1813-1884): was captain of engineers, assistant in charge
of the United States Coast Survey Office at Washington, becoming
lieutenant-colonel. He received 12 tidal letters mostly from Pourtales.
Bolles,
C.P. 1t
Bowditch, Nathaniel,
of Otis Place, Boston MA. Eldest of four children of the nautical textbook
writer of the same name. Together, they wrote 1 tidal letter.
Cassidy
A
2f
Clark
JC
1f
Collins
J
1f
Cooper
WW 4f
Cordel
E
1f
Cox
1t
Davis, Charles Henry (1807-1877):
a naval officer in charge of the coast survey from Rhode Island north and
published "A Memoir upon the Geological Action of the Tidal and Other Currents
of the Ocean" (Memoirs American Academy, vol.IV, n.s. 1849). and "The Law
of the Deposit of the Flood Tide" (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,
vol.III, 1852), supervised publication of the American Ephemeris and Nautical
Almanac. 1f 1t
Dean
GW
1f
Edison
AD
1f
Everett, Edward
(1794-1865): M.A. Harvard 1814, politician. 1f 1t
Fairfield, George A.:
assistant United States Coast Survey. 2f
Ferrel,
William (1817-1891): meteorologist, entered the Coast and Geodetic Survey in
1867 and devised a tide-predicting machine, published "Tidal Researches" (United
States Coast and Geodetic Survey Report, 1874, Appendix).
Ferrel
conjectured that tides should retard the Earth’s rotation, an effect dismissed
by
Laplace
.
Ferrel found that
Laplace
had neglected 2nd order terms which gave the retarding.
After
Laplace, Ferrel was chief founder of the subject now known as geophysical fluid
dynamics. He gave the first general formulation of the equations of motion for a
body moving with respect to the rotating earth and drew from them the
consequences for atmospheric and oceanic circulation. He worked with the
American Nautical Almanac from 1858 to 1867 when he then joined the U.S. Coast
Survey. His first paper was published in B. A. Gould Astronomical Journal 1853.
Since
Laplace
had claimed to account for all
the observed acceleration in the moon’s orbit without tidal friction, Ferrel
suggested that the latter might be counteracted by the earth’s shrinking as it
cooled. When about 1860 it became clear that
Laplace
’s
theory could not account for the observed value of the moon’s acceleration,
Ferrel returned to the problem in a paper read to the
American
Academy
of Arts and Sciences in 1864. Although others reached the same general
conclusion independently, Ferrel’s was the first quantitative treatment of
tidal friction, a problem that continues to be of scientific interest.
After
three more papers published locally, Ferrel returned to tidal theory in 1856
with his second paper in Gould’s Astronomical Journal. In it he suggested that
Laplace
was in error when he claimed that the diurnal tide would vanish in an ocean of
uniform depth. Ferrel’s criticisms were parallel to Airy’s, and both were
strongly opposed by Kelvin. The problem of “oscillations of the second kind”
to which they relate remains of current scientific interest.
In
both these early papers Ferrel established the basis of his contributions to the
theory of tides.
Laplace
had ignored fluid friction, which was not successfully treated mathematically
until Navier and Poisson in the 1820’s and Saint-Venant and Stokes in the
1840’s inaugurated the modern theory. In tidal studies Airy (1845) assumed
friction to be proportional to the first power of the velocity, in which case
(as in
Laplace
’s)
the equations are linear. Thomas Young (1823), although he assumed friction to
be proportional to the square of the velocity, failed to introduce the rquired
equation of continuity. Ferrel’s major contribution to tidal theory was thus
to begin the full nonlinear treatment necessitated by realistic assumptions
concerning friction.
After
joining the Coast Survey, Ferrel made important contributions to the techniques
of tidal prediction. He extended the nonharmonic developments of the
tide-producing potential beyond the points reached by Laplace and Lubbock, and
he gave the first reasonably complete harmonic development. Here his endeavours
were parallel to those of Kelvin, who was responsible for the first
tide-predicting machine (probably the earliest piece of large-scale computing
machinery). In 1880 Ferrel, too, designed a tide predictor, which went into
service in 1883. Although it was an analogue machine like Kelvin’s, Ferrel’s
gave maxima and minima rather than a continuous curve as its output. Ferrel also
made considerable progress in dealing with the shallow-water tidal components
and in using tidal data to calculate the mass of the moon
[Ferrel’s
major work on tides is his Tidal Researches, appended to the Coast Survey Report
for 1874
Washington
1874; and he described his tide predictor in app.10 to the Coast Survey Report
for 1883
Washington
1884. Ferrel’s bibliography, in Biographical Memoirs National Academy of
Sciences, 3 1895 300-309 lists more than 100 items; it is preceded 287-299 by an
edited autobiography - the MS of which is in Harvard College Library. Cleveland
Abbe’s memoir in (as above) 267-286 is the fullest; more concise is W.M. Davis
Proceedings of the Academy of Arts and Sciences 28 1893 388-393.
1f
Foreman:
Smithsonian professor. 1t
Foster
JG
3f
Gairdner, Meredith 1f
Gibble
JE
1f
Gibbs, Lewis R.:
professor of mathematics, Charleston. 1f
Gordon
WW: Sent 20 tidal letters, chiefly to Bache; he received 29 letters,
chiefly from Mitchell, Bache, Ober and Pourtales. Biographical information
on this scientists would be very welcome.
Graham, James Duncan (1799-1865): lieutenant-colonel
surveyor and topographer, during 1858-9 he discovered the existence of a lunar
tide on the Great Lakes. 1f
Heaton
H
5t
Hein
J
1f
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