Sydney Chapman (mathematician) - Biography

Biography

Chapman was born in Eccles, near Salford in England and began his advanced studies at a technical institute, now the University of Salford, in 1902. In 1904 at age 16, Chapman entered the Victoria University of Manchester. He competed for a scholarship to the university offered by his home county, and was the last student selected. Chapman later reflected, "I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd hit one place lower." He initially studied engineering in the department headed by Osborne Reynolds. Chapman was taught mathematics by Horace Lamb, the Beyer professor of mathematics, and J.E. Littlewood, who came from Cambridge in Chapman's final year at Manchester. Although he graduated with an engineering degree, Chapman had become so enthusiastic for mathematics that he stayed for one further year to take a mathematics degree. Following Lamb's suggestion, Chapman applied for a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was at first awarded only a partial scholarship as a sizar (meaning that he obtained financial support by acting as a servant other students), but from his second year onwards he received a full scholarship. He graduated as a wrangler in 1910. He began his research in pure mathematics under G. H. Hardy, but later that year was asked by Sir Frank Dyson to be his chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. From 1914 to 1919 he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in mathematics and a fellow of Trinity. He held the Beyer Chair of Applied Mathematics at Manchester from 1919 to 1924, the same position as had been held by Lamb, and then moved to Imperial College London. During the Second World War he was Deputy Scientific Advisor to the Army Council.

In 1946, Chapman was elected to the Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy at Oxford, and was appointed fellow of Queen's College. In 1953, on his retirement from Oxford, Chapman took research and teaching opportunities all over the world, including at the University of Alaska and the University of Colorado, but also as far afield as Istanbul, Cairo, Prague, and Tokyo. As the Advisory Scientific Director of the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute from 1951 to 1970, he spent three months of the year in Alaska, usually during winter for research into aurora. Much of the remainder of the year he spent at the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.

The relationship of Chapman with some German geophysicists (e.g. Ertel, Bartels, and A. Schmidt) has been investigated by Wilfried Schröder.

In 1970, Chapman died in Boulder, Colorado at the age of 82.