Edward John Routh FRS (20 January 1831–7 June 1907), was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, noted as the outstanding coach of students preparing for the
Mathematical TriposThe Mathematical Tripos is the taught mathematics course at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos that is examined in Cambridge.-Origin:...
examination of the
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
in its heyday in the middle of the nineteenth century. He also did much to systematise the mathematical theory of
mechanicsMechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment....
and created several ideas critical to the development of modern
control systems theoryControl theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The desired output of a system is called the reference...
.
Early life
Routh was born of an English family in
QuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, then in the British colony of
Upper CanadaThe Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...
. The family could trace its history back to the Norman conquest when it acquired land at
RouthRouth is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.It is situated is approximately north east of Beverley, lying on the A1035 road.According to the 2001 UK census, Routh parish had a population of 94.-References:...
near
BeverleyBeverley is a market town, civil parish and the county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, located between the River Hull and the Westwood. The town is noted for Beverley Minster and architecturally-significant religious buildings along New Walk and other areas, as well as the Beverley...
,
YorkshireYorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. His parents were Sir Randolph Isham Routh (1782–1858) and his second wife, Marie Louise (1810–1891). Randolph was a
commissariatA commissariat is the department of an army charged with the provision of supplies, both food and forage, for the troops. The supply of military stores such as ammunition is not included in the duties of a commissariat. In almost every army the duties of transport and supply are performed by the...
officer who had served at the
Battle of WaterlooThe Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, and Marie Louise was the daughter of
judgeA judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
Jean-Thomas TaschereauJean-Thomas Taschereau was a son of Gabriel-Elzéar Taschereau and Marie-Louise-Élizabeth Bazin. He was a seigneur, lawyer, judge and politician....
and the sister of judge
Jean-ThomasJean-Thomas Taschereau was a Canadian lawyer and judge.Born in Quebec City, Lower Canada , the son of...
and
cardinalA cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
Elzéar-Alexandre TaschereauElzéar-Alexandre Taschereau was a Canadian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Quebec from 1871 until his death in 1898...
.
Routh came to England aged eleven and attended
University College SchoolUniversity College School, generally known as UCS, is an Independent school charity situated in Hampstead, north west London, England. The school was founded in 1830 by University College London and inherited many of that institution's progressive and secular views...
and then entered University College, London in 1847, having won a
scholarshipA scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
. There he studied under
Augustus De MorganAugustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....
, whose influence led to Routh to decide on a career in mathematics.
Routh obtained his
B.A.A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
(1849) and
M.A.A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
(1853) in London. He attended
Peterhouse, CambridgePeterhouse is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the oldest college of the University, having been founded in 1284 by Hugo de Balsham, Bishop of Ely...
, where he was taught by
Isaac TodhunterIsaac Todhunter FRS , was an English mathematician who is best known today for the books he wrote on mathematics and its history.- Life and work :...
and coached by "senior wrangler maker"
William HopkinsWilliam Hopkins FRS was an English mathematician and geologist. He is famous as a private tutor of aspiring undergraduate Cambridge mathematicians, earning him the sobriquet the senior-wrangler maker....
. In 1854, Routh graduated just above
James Clerk MaxwellJames Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...
, as Senior Wrangler, sharing the
Smith's prizeThe Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in theoretical Physics, mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England.- History :...
with him. Routh was elected fellow of Peterhouse in 1855.
Mathematics tutor
On graduation, Routh took up work as a private mathematics tutor in Cambridge and took on the pupils of William John Steele during the latter's fatal illness, though insisting that Steele take the fees. Routh inherited Steele's pupils, going on to establish an unbeaten record as a coach. He coached over 600 pupils between 1855 and 1888, 27 of them making Senior Wrangler, as to Hopkins' 17.
Routh worked conscientiously and systematically, taking rigidly timetabled classes of ten pupils during the day and spending the evenings preparing extra material for the ablest men. "His lectures were enlivened by mathematical jokes of a rather heavy kind."
Routh was a staunch defender of the Cambridge competitive system and despaired when the university started to publish examination results in alphabetical order, observing "They will want to run the Derby alphabetically next".
Private life
Astronomer RoyalAstronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 1675; the second is the Astronomer Royal for Scotland dating from 1834....
George Biddell AirySir George Biddell Airy PRS KCB was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881...
sought to entice Routh to work at the
Royal Observatory, GreenwichThe Royal Observatory, Greenwich , in London, England played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, and is best known as the location of the prime meridian...
. Though Airy did not succeed, at Greenwich Routh met Airy's eldest daughter Hilda (1840-1916) whom he married in 1864. The couple had five sons and a daughter.
Routh was a "kindly man and a good conversationalist with friends, but with strangers he was shy and reserved."
Work
Routh collaborated with
Henry BroughamHenry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux was a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.As a young lawyer in Scotland Brougham helped to found the Edinburgh Review in 1802 and contributed many articles to it. He went to London, and was called to the English bar in...
on the
Analytical View of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia (1855).
He published a
textbookA textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...
,
Dynamics of a System of Rigid Bodies (1860, 6th ed. 1897) in which he did much to define and systematise the modern mathematical approach to
mechanicsMechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment....
.
This influenced
Felix KleinChristian Felix Klein was a German mathematician, known for his work in group theory, function theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the connections between geometry and group theory...
and
Arnold SommerfeldArnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld was a German theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in atomic and quantum physics, and also educated and groomed a large number of students for the new era of theoretical physics...
, Klein arranging the German translation. It also did much to influence
William ThomsonWilliam Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging...
and
Peter Guthrie TaitPeter Guthrie Tait FRSE was a Scottish mathematical physicist, best known for the seminal energy physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy, which he co-wrote with Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory, which contributed to the eventual formation of topology as a mathematical...
's
Treatise on Natural PhilosophyTreatise on Natural Philosophy was an 1867 text book by William Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait, published by Oxford University Press, that did much to define the modern discipline of physics.-External links:* on Google books*...
(1867).
The
RouthianIn the branch of physics known as dynamics the Routhian is a hybrid of the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian developed by Edward John Routh. The Hamiltonian can be obtained by a Legendre transform of the Lagrangian; if this transformation is performed only with regards to cyclic coordinates , the...
of classical mechanics in named in honor of him.
Stability and control
In addition to his intensive work in teaching and writing, which had a persistent effect on the presentation of
mathematical physicsMathematical physics refers to development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The Journal of Mathematical Physics defines this area as: "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and...
, he also contributed original research such as the Routh-Hurwitz theorem.
Central tenets of modern control systems theory relies upon the Routh stability criterion, an application of
Sturm's TheoremIn mathematics, Sturm's theorem is a symbolic procedure to determine the number of distinct real roots of a polynomial. It was named for Jacques Charles François Sturm...
to evaluate
Cauchy indicesIn mathematical analysis, the Cauchy index is an integer associated to a real rational function over an interval. By the Routh-Hurwitz theorem, we have the following interpretation: the Cauchy index of...
through the use of the Euclidean algorithm.
By Routh
- Brougham and Vaux, Henry Brougham, Baron & Routh, E. J. (ed. I. B. Cohen) [1855] (1972) Analytical View of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp. Reprinted in 'Stability of Motion' (ed. A.T.Fuller) London 1975 (Taylor & Francis).
Obituaries
- The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, 8 June 1907 (available at O'Connor & Robertson (2003))
- Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 2nd ser., 5 (1907), xiv–xx;
- Nature
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, 76 (1907), 200–02;
- Cambridge Review, 13 June 1907, 480–81;
- H. H. T.
Herbert Hall Turner was a British astronomer and seismologist.-Biography:Herbert Hall Turner was educated at Clifton College and Trinity College, Cambridge., In 1884 he accepted the post of Chief Assistant at Greenwich Observatory and stayed there for nine years...
, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 68 (1907–8), 239–41
About Routh
- — (2004) "Routh, Edward John (1831–1907)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 10 September 2007 (2003)
- Sneddon, I. N. (1970-1990) "Routh, Edward John", in Gillispie, C. C. (ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York: Charles Screibner's Sons