| Authorised form of name | Nye; John Frederick (1923 - 2019) |
| Dates | 1923 - 2019 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Hove, Sussex, England |
| Date of birth | 26/02/1923 |
| Date of death | 08/01/2019 |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Research field | Glaciology |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 18/03/1976 |
| Age at election | 53 |
| Relationships | Son of Haydn Percival Nye and Jessie Mary Nye (nee Hague); brother of Peter Hague Nye (FRS 1987) |
| General context | John Nye’s notable early contributions to crystal plasticity included (with Lawrence Bragg) the bubble-raft model and a study of geometrical relations in dislocated crystals that laid the foundations of continuous distributions of dislocations. His book on tensor properties of crystals is a standard work. In glaciology, he formulated the tensor-invariant generalisation of Glen’s nonlinear flow law for ice that forms the basis for modern glacier mechanics and explained, from his own field work, the origin of waves below ice falls. He also revealed how veins of water at three-grain junctions in temperate polycrystalline ice control its thermal behaviour.
John’s laboratory-sized model of the echo sounding of the Antarctic ice sheet used ultrasonic waves in place of much longer radio waves. With it, he discovered that monochromatic waves, quite generally, contain dislocations like those in crystals — thereby establishing (with Michael Berry) singular optics as a thriving new branch of optics. In particular, he revealed the fine-scale linear patterns of optical vortices that underlie the diffraction fields of the first five of Thom’s ‘elementary catastrophes’.
Professor John Nye FRS died on 8 January 2019. |
| Sources | Sources:
Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society, Vol 57, 2011, pp 315- 326
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nye_(scientist) |
| Virtual International Authority File | http://viaf.org/viaf/7467603 |
| Royal Society code | NA4040 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| Reference number | Title | Date |
| IM/GA/JGRS/7971 | Nye, John Frederick | 1977 |
| RR/71/225 | Referee's report by Albert James Bradley, on a paper 'Plastic deformation of silver chloride I. Internal stresses and the glide mechanism' by John Frederick Nye | 1948 |
| EC/1976/26 | Nye, John Frederick: certificate of election to the Royal Society | 1974 |
| RR/71/224 | Referee's report by Edward Neville Da Costa Andrade, on a paper 'Plastic deformation of silver chloride I. Internal stresses and the glide mechanism' by John Frederick Nye | 1948 |
| JFN | Papers of John Frederick Nye FRS, glaciologist | 1940s-2000s |
| RR/79/109 | Referee's report by Robert Stoneley, on a paper 'The flow law of ice from measurements in glacier tunnels, laboratory experiments and the Jungfraufirn borehole experiment' by John Frederick Nye | 17 May 1953 |
| RR/75/74 | Referee's report by Albert James Bradley, on a paper 'The flow of glaciers and ice-sheets as a problem in plasticity' by John Frederick Nye | 6 March 1951 |
| RR/75/341 | Referee's report by Nevill Francis Mott, on a paper 'A dynamical model of a crystal structure. IV. Grain boundaries' by W M Lomer and John Frederick Nye | 31 December 1951 |