Lund
Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish province of Scania, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Scania County. The Öre ...
– 7 November 1944 in
Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019.
Located north of the ca ...
) was a
theoretical physicist
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experime ...
in Uppsala and Director of the Nobel Institute for Theoretical Physics in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...
.
Life
Oseen was born in
Lund
Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish province of Scania, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Scania County. The Öre ...
, and took a Fil. Kand. degree (B.Sc.) at
Lund University
, motto = Ad utrumque
, mottoeng = Prepared for both
, established =
, type = Public research university
, budget = SEK 9 billion licentiat'' in 1900.
He visited Göttingen in the winter of 1900–01, where he attended David Hilbert's lectures on partial differential equations. He was probably also influenced by the other famous mathematician in Göttingen, Felix Klein, and, on a later visit, by the hydrodynamicist Ludwig Prandtl. A great influence was also exercised by his teacher in Lund, A. V. Bäcklund.
In 1934 Oseen became a member of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meeting ...
viscous
The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water.
Viscosity quantifies the in ...
fluid flow at small
Reynolds number
In fluid mechanics, the Reynolds number () is a dimensionless quantity that helps predict fluid flow patterns in different situations by measuring the ratio between inertial and viscous forces. At low Reynolds numbers, flows tend to be dom ...
Horace Lamb
Sir Horace Lamb (27 November 1849 – 4 December 1934)R. B. Potts,, ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Volume 5, MUP, 1974, pp 54–55. Retrieved 5 Sep 2009 was a British applied mathematician and author of several influential texts on ...
, to the
Lamb–Oseen vortex In fluid dynamics, the Lamb–Oseen vortex models a line vortex that decays due to viscosity. This vortex is named after Horace Lamb and Carl Wilhelm Oseen.
Mathematical description
Oseen looked for a solution for the Navier–Stokes equation ...
unsteady flow
In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) ...
at low Reynolds numbers.
He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1936 in Oslo.
Nobel committee
Oseen was a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for prom ...
from 1921, and a member of the Academy's
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
committee for physics from 1922. As a full professor of a Swedish university, Oseen also had the right to nominate Nobel Prize winners.
Oseen nominated
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...
for the
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
in 1921, for Einstein's work on the
photoelectric effect
The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, and solid sta ...
(rather than the more controversial theory of
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
). Einstein was finally awarded the prize for 1921 when Oseen repeated the nomination in 1922.
Oseen's approximation
In fluid dynamics, the Oseen equations (or Oseen flow) describe the flow of a viscous and incompressible fluid at small Reynolds numbers, as formulated by Carl Wilhelm Oseen in 1910. Oseen flow is an improved description of these flows, as compar ...
*
Lamb–Oseen vortex In fluid dynamics, the Lamb–Oseen vortex models a line vortex that decays due to viscosity. This vortex is named after Horace Lamb and Carl Wilhelm Oseen.
Mathematical description
Oseen looked for a solution for the Navier–Stokes equation ...
*
Basset–Boussinesq–Oseen equation
In fluid dynamics, the Basset–Boussinesq–Oseen equation (BBO equation) describes the motion of – and forces on – a small particle in unsteady flow at low Reynolds numbers. The equation is named after Joseph Valentin Boussinesq, Alfred Bar ...
*
Ewald–Oseen extinction theorem In optics, the Ewald–Oseen extinction theorem, sometimes referred to as just the extinction theorem, is a theorem that underlies the common understanding of scattering (as well as refraction, reflection, and diffraction). It is named after Paul ...