| Authorised form of name | Lighthill; Sir; Michael James (1924 - 1998) |
| Dates | 1924 - 1998 |
| Date of birth | 23/01/1924 |
| Date of death | 17/07/1998 |
| Occupation | Mathematician |
| Activity | Education:
Winchester College and Trinity College Cambridge (1941-1943);
Career:
Worked on supersonic flight at the National Physical Laboratory Teddington (1943-1945); senior lecturer in mathematics (1945-50) and Beyer Professor of Applied Mathematics (1950-1959) at Manchester University; Director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough (1959-1964); Royal Society Research Professor at Imperial College London (1964-1969); Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (1969-1979); Provost of University College London (1979-1989).
Lighthill is acknowledged as one of the great mathematicians of the twentieth century. At Manchester he led powerful and inventive fluid dynamics group. He worked on gas dynamics, and also launched two new fields in fluid mechanics. The first of these was aeroacoustics or sound generated aerodynamically. It was announced in a paper published by the Royal Society in 1952 and had an immediate implication for noise reduction in jet aeroengines. The second was nonlinear acoustics, which Lighthill introduced in an article written in 1956 in honour of the seventieth birthday of G I Taylor. Its applications include kidney-stone-crushing lithotripsy machines and, with the same mathematics, flood waves in rivers and traffic flow on highways. At the Royal Aircraft Establishment Lighhill was responsible for the management of an organisation with 8,000 staff including 1,400 scientists and engineers. His detailed oversight included the critical examination of every report emanating from the Establishment. he worked on the aerodynamics of the delta wings for Concorde, on spacecraft, and on short-haul aircraft. In the early 1960s he forged links with the Post Office to develop the commercial use of television and communication satellites. At Imperial College London he began his development of mathematical biofluiddynamics: the quantitative understanding of the flow of blood in mammalian cardiovascular systems, of air in the human airways, and of the flying of birds and insects and the swimming of fish. At Cambridge he undertook major teaching commitments and expended still further his range of research interests: control systems, active control of sound, waves, oceanography and atmospheric dynamics, and on biological mechanics at the micrscopic level. At University College London he was involved in much fundraising, in new College developments especially in bilogy and biotechnology and in expanding the representation of women at senior levels; while continuing his scientific interests, the unpredictability of large systems, wave extraction devices, and the human auditory system.
In addition to the research and academic posts he held, Lighthill undertook many advisory and leadership roles in respect of public and professional bodies in Britain and internationally. He was the founder of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, serving as its first President (1965-1967) and was President of the Mathematical Association (1970) and President of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (1971-1974). The International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics was another major commitment and he served as President of the Union (1984-1988). After retirement he took up the Chairmanship of the International Council of Scientific Unions Special Committee on the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction.
Honours:
Kt 1971 |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 19/03/1953 |
| Age at election | 29 |
| Royal Society activity | Royal Society roles:
Council: 1958-1959, 1965-1969; Sec 1965-1969; VP 1965-1969
Medals and prizes:
Royal Medal 1964; Copley Medal 1998
Lectures:
Bakerian 1961; Humphry Davy 1991 |
| Relationships | Married Nancy Dumaresq, had one son and four daughters. |
| Sources | Obituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 2001 vol 47 pp 333-356, plate, by T J Pedley FRS
Papers covering period 1940-2000 deposited in Special Collections, Library Services, University College London. Catalogue compiled by Peter Harper and Timothy Powell of the National Cataloguing Unit of the Archves of Contemporary Scientists, 'Catalogue of the papers and corresondence of Sir (Michael ) James Lighthill FRS (1924-1998)' reference NCUACS catalogue number 175/6/09 (2009) |
| Virtual International Authority File | http://viaf.org/viaf/8430889 |
| Royal Society code | NA5064 |
| Reference number | Title | Date |
| IM/002749 | Lighthill, Sir Michael James | nd |
| JV/12/14/9 | Correspondence between Sir James Lighthill (Provost, UCL), Mr W W Slack (Dean, The Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London) and Sir John Vane | 2 - 23 July 1984 |
| RR/70/156 | Referee's report by George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. II. Auxiliary theorems on the hypergeometric functions' by Michael James Lighthill | 1947 |
| RR/69/207 | Letter from George Frederick Temple, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. I. Symmetrical channels' by Michael James Lighthill to J D Griffith Davies, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society | 1 March 1947 |
| RR/69/205 | Referee's report by George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. I. Symmetrical channels' by Michael James Lighthill | 10 November 1946 |
| RR/70/155 | Letter from George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. II. Auxiliary theorems on the hypergeometric functions' by Michael James Lighthill to David Christie Martin, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society | 20 May 1947 |
| RR/70/157 | Referee's report by George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. III. Flow round a body' by Michael James Lighthill | 1947 |
| RR/69/206 | Letter from George Frederick Temple, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. I. Symmetrical channels' by Michael James Lighthill to J D Griffith Davies, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society | 10 December 1946 |
| RR/70/154 | Letter from David Christie Martin, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society, on a paper 'The hodograph transformation in trans-sonic flow. II. Auxiliary theorems on the hypergeometric functions' by Michael James Lighthill to George Frederick James Temple | 9 May 1947 |
| EC/1953/16 | Lighthill, Sir Michael James: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |
| HWT/24/6/25 | Correspondence regarding exchanges and joint research projects including British proposal for collaboration in computer application to fluid flow | March - April 1971 |
| RR/71/179 | Referee's report by William George Penney, Baron Penney of East Hendred, on a paper 'The diffraction of blast. I' by Michael James Lighthill | [1948] |
| HWT/25/9 | Correspondence with Chinese officials, British scientists and Leverhulme Trust regarding renewal of exchanges suspended in 1966 | March - November 1971 |
| WF/354 | Grant application from The Mathematical Association to the Wolfson Foundation | 1971-1975 |
| RR/73/43 | Referee's report by Percival Albert Sheppard, on a paper 'Contributions to the theory of heat transfer through a laminar boundary layer' by Michael James Lighthill | 1950 |
| RR/73/42 | Referee's report by George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'Contributions to the theory of heat transfer through a laminar boundary layer' by Michael James Lighthill | 1950 |
| RR/77/226 | Referee's report by Leslie Howarth, on a paper 'On boundary layers and upstream influence. I. A comparison between subsonic and supersonic flows' by Michael James Lighthill | 20 November 1952 |
| RR/77/227 | Referee's report by Arthur Fage, on a paper 'On boundary layers and upstream influence. I. A comparison between subsonic and supersonic flows' by Michael James Lighthill | 5 January 1953 |
| RR/77/228 | Referee's report by Leslie Howarth, on a paper 'On boundary layers and upstream influence. II. Supersonic flows without separation' by Michael James Lighthill | 27 November 1952 |
| RR/77/229 | Referee's report by Robert Alexander Frazer, on a paper 'On boundary layers and upstream influence. II. Supersonic flows without separation' by Michael James Lighthill | 6 January 1953 |
| RR/79/132 | Referee's report by Michael James Lighthill, on a paper 'The stability of viscous flow between parallel planes in the presence of a co-planar magnetic field' by John Trevor Stuart | 16 September 1953 |
| RR/79/186 | Referee's report by George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'Sound generated aerodynamically. II. Turbulence as a source of sound' by Michael James Lighthill | 5 September 1953 |
| RR/79/323 | Letter from Leslie Howarth to D C Martin, assistant secretary of the Royal Society, on a paper 'The response of laminar skin friction and heat transfer to fluctuations in the stream velocity' by Michael James Lighthill | 5 February 1954 |
| RR/79/324 | Referee's report by Leslie Howarth, on a paper 'The response of laminar skin friction and heat transfer to fluctuations in the stream velocity' by Michael James Lighthill | 5 February 1954 |
| RR/75/302 | Referee's report by George Frederick James Temple, on a paper 'Sound generated aerodynamically. I. General theory' by Michael James Lighthill | 26 November 1951 |