Harold Jeffreys

Sir Harold Jeffreys
Sir Harold Jeffreys
Born	22 April 1891; Fatfield, County Durham, England
Died	18 March 1989 (aged 97); Cambridge, England
Alma mater	Armstrong College ; St John's College, Cambridge
Known for	Jeffreys prior; Jeffreys model; WKBJ approximation
Spouse	Bertha Swirles
Awards	Smith's Prize (1915); Adams Prize (1926); Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1937); Fellow of the Royal Society (1925); Murchison Medal (1939); Royal Medal (1948); William Bowie Medal (1952); Guy Medal (Gold, 1962); Vetlesen Prize (1962); Wollaston Medal (1964)
	Scientific career
Fields	mathematics; geophysics
Doctoral students	Hermann Bondi; Sydney Goldstein; Vasant Huzurbazar

Sir Harold Jeffreys, FRS^[1]^[3] (22 April 1891 – 18 March 1989) was a British geophysicist who made significant contributions to mathematics and statistics. His book, Theory of Probability, which was first published in 1939, played an important role in the revival of the objective Bayesian view of probability.^[4]^[5]^[6]

Education

Jeffreys was born in Fatfield, County Durham, England, the son of Robert Hal Jeffreys, headmaster of Fatfield Church School, and his wife, Elizabeth Mary Sharpe, a school teacher.^[7] He was educated at his father's school and at Rutherford Technical College, then studied at Armstrong College in Newcastle upon Tyne (at that time part of the University of Durham) and with the University of London External Programme.^[8]^[9]

Jeffreys subsequently won a scholarship to study the Mathematical Tripos at St John's College, Cambridge, where he established a reputation as an excellent student: obtaining first-class marks for his papers in Part One of the Tripos, he was a Wrangler in Part Two, and in 1915 he was awarded the prestigious Smith's Prize.^[9]

Career

Jeffreys became a fellow of St John's College in 1914, retaining his fellowship until his death 75 years later. At the University of Cambridge he taught mathematics, then geophysics and finally became the Plumian Professor of Astronomy.

In 1940, he married fellow mathematician and physicist, Bertha Swirles (1903–1999), and together they wrote Methods of Mathematical Physics.

One of his major contributions was on the Bayesian approach to probability (also see Jeffreys prior), as well as the idea that the Earth's planetary core was liquid.^[10]

By 1924 Jeffreys had developed a general method of approximating solutions to linear, second-order differential equations, including the Schrödinger equation. Although the Schrödinger equation was developed two years later, Wentzel, Kramers, and Brillouin were apparently unaware of this earlier work, so Jeffreys is often neglected when credit is given for the WKB approximation.^[11]

Jeffreys received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1937, the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1960, and the Royal Statistical Society's Guy Medal in Gold in 1962. In 1948, he received the Charles Lagrange Prize from the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.^[12] He was knighted in 1953.

From 1939 to 1952 he was established as Director of the International Seismological Summary further known as International Seismological Centre.

The textbook Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, written by the physicist and probability theorist Edwin T. Jaynes, is dedicated to Jeffreys. The dedication reads, "Dedicated to the memory of Sir Harold Jeffreys, who saw the truth and preserved it."

It is only through an appendix to the third edition of Jeffreys' book Scientific Inference that we know about Mary Cartwright's method of proving that the number $π$ is irrational.

Opposition to continental drift and plate tectonics

Jeffreys, like many of his peers, staunchly opposed the concept of continental drift as put forth by Alfred Wegener and Arthur Holmes. This opposition persisted even into the 1960s among his colleagues at Cambridge. For him, continental drift was "out of the question" because no force even remotely strong enough to move the continents across the Earth's surface was evident.^[13] As geological and geophysical evidence for continental drift and plate tectonics mounted in the 1960s and after, to the point where it became the unifying concept of modern geology, Jeffreys remained a stubborn opponent of the theory to his death.

Honours and awards

Fellow, Royal Society, 1925^[1]
Adams Prize, 1927 (Constitution of the Earth)
Gold Medal, Royal Astronomical Society, 1937
Buchan Prize, Royal Meteorological Society, 1929
Murchison Medal of Geological Society (Great Britain) 1939
Victoria Medal, Royal Geographical Society, 1941
Charles Lagrange Prize, Brussels Academy, 1948
Royal Medal, 1948
William Bowie Medal, American Geophysical Union, 1952
Knighted, 1953
Copley Medal, Royal Society, 1961
Vetlesen Prize, 1962

Bibliography

1924: The Earth, Its Origin, History and Physical Constitution, Cambridge University Press; 5th edn. 1970; 6th edn. 1976
1927: Operational Methods in Mathematical Physics, Cambridge University Press via Internet Archive, Review:^[14]
1929: The Future of the Earth, Norton & Company
1931: Scientific Inference, Macmillan Publishers; 2nd edn. 1937;^[15] 3rd edn. 1973^[16]
1931: Cartesian Tensors. Cambridge University Press;^[17] 2nd edn. 1961
1934: Ocean Waves and Kindred Geophysical Phenomena, with Vaughan Cornish, Cambridge University Press
1935: Earthquakes and Mountains, Methuen Publishing; 2nd edn. 1950
1939: Theory of Probability,^[18] Clarendon Press, Oxford; 2nd edn. 1948; 3rd edn. 1961
1946: Methods of Mathematical Physics, with Bertha S. Jeffreys. Cambridge University Press;^[19] 2nd edn. 1950; 3rd edn. 1956; corrected 3rd edn. 1966
1962: Asymptotic Approximations, Clarendon Press, Oxford
1963: Nutation and Forced Motion of the Earth's Pole from the Data of Latitude Observations, Macmillan
1971–77: Collected Papers of Sir Harold Jeffreys on Geophysics and Other Sciences, Gordon and Breach