ROUTH

UNITED KINGDOM (see also List of Individuals)

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20.1.1831 Quebec/CA - 7.6.1907 Cambridge/UK

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Edward John Routh was educated at University College, London, and at Cambridge, where he was a Senior-Wrangler in 1854. He adopted the profession of a Lecturer in mathematics from 1855 and had 27 senior wranglers and more than 40 Smith's prizemen amongst his pupils. Routh retired in 1888, when his portrait was presented to his wife by his pupils. Routh was in the Council of the Royal Society from 1888 to 1890, of which he was a Fellow from 1872. Further, he was decorated with the Honorary Doctorate of Glasgow University and a Fellow of the University of London. Routh was married to the eldest daughter of George Biddell Airy (1801-1892).

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Routh was known for various treatises in mechanics. These include the topics of rigid dynamics of which a German translation was published, statics, the stability of motion, and particle dynamics. Further, a number of papers were published in the Mathematical Society of London, the Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, and the Royal Society. In hydrodynamics, he worked mainly in waves. He published famous advanced treatises which became standard applied mathematics texts, and of which the part dealing with the equations of motion was taken over by William Thomson (1824-1907), the later Lord Kelvin, and Peter Guthrie Tait (1831-1901) in their outstanding Natural philosophy treatise. The skills of Routh as a teacher may be illustrated by the following anecdote: The case of a student of hydrodynamics was alleged as typical of the trials to which his patience was exposed. The troubled undergraduate's primary difficulty lay in conceiving how anything could float. This was so completely removed by Dr. Routh's lucid explanation that he went away sorely perplexed as to how anything could sink.

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_{Anonymous (1920). Routh, Edward John. Who was who 1897-1916: 614. Black: London. Poggendorff, J.C. (1898). Routh, Edward John. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 3: 1148; 4: 1277; 5: 1072. Barth: Leipzig, with bibliography.}

_{Fuller, A.T., ed. (1975). Stability of motion: Reprint of Routh's original work of 1877, with additional material by Clifford, Sturm and Bôcher. Taylor&Francis: London. P}

_{Routh, E.J. (1905). The advanced part of a treatise on the dynamics of a system of rigid bodies. MacMillan: London.}

_{Routh, E.J. (1913). The elementary part of a treatise on the dynamics of a system of rigid bodies. MacMillan: London.}

_{http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/Mathematicians/Routh.html http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/ROUTHhistory/Mathematicians/Routh.htmlhttp://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/Mathematicians/Routh.html . P}