RICHARDSON L F

UNITED KINGDOM (see also List of Individuals)

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11.10.1881 Newcastle/UK - 30.9.1953 Kilmun/UK

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Lewis Fry Richardson graduated in natural sciences from King's College, Cambridge in 1903. After a short stay as an assistant at the National Physical Laboratory NPL and a junior demonstrator in physics he became in 1907 an assistant in the meteorology department of NPL. In 1912 he moved to Manchester College of Technology as a Lecturer in physics and Richardson was from 1913 in the Meteorological Office, where he returned after three years of war service in 1919 for a year. From 1920 to 1929 he was in charge of the physics department at Westminster Training College and then accepted until 1940 the position of principal at the Paisley Technical College. After retirement, Richardson was a private scientist. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1926 and contributed many papers to its Transactions.

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Richardson's work falls broadly into four categories: His development of the finite differences method to the solution of physical problems such as in meteorology; his contribution to diffusion, especially to eddy-diffusion in the atmosphere; his works in the study of the relation between the nations, especially to elucidate the effects of armament, trade, communications and rivalry among nations; and educational work at Westminster and Paisley. In 1919 and 1920, Richardson published three important papers on turbulence, thereby introducing the eddy diffusivity, a notion that has been generally adopted. While doing experiments in atmospheric turbulence, Richardson introduced a number bearing his name. The Richardson number corresponds to the ratio between the vertical density gradient and the square of the increase of horizontal velocity. It describes processes in stratified flows and alternate formulations from the previous may be found in the literature. The dimensionless parameter determines whether a convection process is free or forced.

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_{Anonymous (1954). Dr. L.F. Richardson FRS. Quarterly Journal Royal Meteorological Society}

_{80: 127-128.}

_{Ashford, O.M. (1985). Prophet or professor: The life and work of Lewis Fry Richardson.}

_{Hilger: Bristol. P}

_{Gold, E. (1954). Lewis Fry Richardson. Obituary Notices of FRS 9: 217-235. P}

_{Hunt, J.C.R. (1998). Lewis Fry Richardson and his contributions to mathematics, meteorology, and models of conflict. Annual Review of Fluid Dynamics 30: xiii-xxxvi. P}

_{Richardson, L.F. (1920). Some measurements of atmospheric turbulence. Phil. Trans. A 221: 1-28 Richardson, L.F. (1952). Transforms for the eddy-diffusion of clusters. Proc. Royal Soc. A 214: 1.}