Carl Wilhelm Oseen (17 April 1879 in

Lund Lund (, ;"Lund"
(US) and ) is a city in the provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, southern Swed ...

– 7 November 1944 in

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

) 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 experi ...

in Uppsala and Director of the Nobel Institute for Theoretical Physics in

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

Life

Oseen was born in

Lund Lund (, ;"Lund"
(US) and ) is a city in the provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, southern Swed ...

, and took a Fil. Kand. degree (B.Sc.) at

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

in 1897 and a ''Filosophie licentiat'' in 1900. He began practicing as a mathematics

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

in 1902, and subsequently obtained his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

a year afterward. He served as interim mathematics professor from 1904-1906 and 1907-1910. He visited

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

in the winter of 1900–01, where he attended

David Hilbert David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental idea ...

's lectures on partial differential equations. He was probably also influenced by the other famous mathematician in Göttingen,

Felix Klein Felix Christian Klein (; ; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and Mathematics education, mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations betwe ...

, and, on a later visit, by the hydrodynamicist

Ludwig Prandtl Ludwig Prandtl (4 February 1875 – 15 August 1953) was a German Fluid mechanics, fluid dynamicist, physicist and aerospace scientist. He was a pioneer in the development of rigorous systematic mathematical analyses which he used for underlyin ...

. 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, meetings, ...

Work

Oseen formulated the fundamentals of the elasticity theory of liquid crystals (Oseen elasticity theory), as well as the

Oseen equations 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 comp ...

for

viscous Viscosity is a measure of a fluid's rate-dependent resistance to a change in shape or to movement of its neighboring portions relative to one another. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of ''thickness''; for example, syrup h ...

fluid flow at small

Reynolds number In fluid dynamics, the Reynolds number () is a dimensionless quantity that helps predict fluid flow patterns in different situations by measuring the ratio between Inertia, inertial and viscous forces. At low Reynolds numbers, flows tend to ...

s. He gave his name to the

Oseen tensor Stokes flow (named after George Gabriel Stokes), also named creeping flow or creeping motion,Kim, S. & Karrila, S. J. (2005) ''Microhydrodynamics: Principles and Selected Applications'', Dover. . is a type of fluid flow where advective inert ...

and, with

Horace Lamb Sir Horace Lamb (27 November 1849 – 4 December 1934R. 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. The Basset–Boussinesq–Oseen (BBO) equation describes the motion of – and forces on – a particle moving in an unsteady flow 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 () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

from 1921, and a member of the Academy's

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

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 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

for the

in 1921, for Einstein's work on the

photoelectric effect The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons from a material caused by electromagnetic radiation such as ultraviolet light. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physi ...

(rather than the more controversial theory of

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

). Einstein was finally awarded the prize for 1921 when Oseen repeated the nomination in 1922.

Selected bibliography

* * * * * *

Life

Work

Nobel committee

Selected bibliography

See also

References

Further reading