People of Science with Brian Cox - Professor Joanna Haigh on Lewis Fry Richardson
Transcript
- Brian: Hello, I’m Professor Brian Cox. Welcome to People of Science.
- Jo, could you introduce yourself and your work.
- Joanna: I’m Jo Haigh. I’m Professor of Atmospheric Physics
- at Imperial College London
- and also co-director of the Gratham Institute on Climate Change.
- My work concerns the processes that contribute to
- why the atmosphere and climate are as they are.
- Brian: This is a series about inspirational scientists in history
- so who is your person of science?
- Joanna: My person of science is Lewis Fry Richardson.
- A mathematician who used his insight into mathematics
- to apply to all sort of problems
- but particularly problems of the atmosphere.
- He designed a scheme which he called a ‘Forecast Factory’
- which was essentially going to be forecasting the weather.
- This is long before there were any computers
- so it was entirely in his mind how these things could work.
- He conceptualised this thing.
- He referred to it like being inside the Albert Hall
- where the North Pole is in the top
- and the equator is around the side
- and the other pole is in the orchestra pit.
- And you’ve got it marked out into squares
- and at each square sits a computer.
- Now a computer is not a machine as we know them, it’s a person
- who is doing a calculation.
- And then people either side of that person would know the solutions
- and they would pass their solutions around.
- This is just like a numerical forecast that we do today.
- But he worked out how many people it would require.
- It’s probably about 3000 or more people to actually do that calculation.
- Brian: It’s quite a wonderful vision isn’t it to have this
- Albert Hall size building
- full of 3000 people synced together.
- He did this over a period of two years
- so it’s certainly not a realistic way of doing weather forecasts.
- Unfortunately, also, the forecast was wrong
- it was way out
- but he was so convinced that this was
- a method that would work that he published it in the Royal Society papers
- and he also published it in a book.
- And nowadays they’re essentially the same equations
- so we’re using the same models
- but we run them lots and lots of times to get a statistical picture
- of what might happen into the future.
- So I think what we’ve got here is his personal record
- of his life for the Royal Society’s Biographical Memoirs.
- And it’s written when he’s 71 years old
- and he's looking back at his career and what was important to him.
- Quite soon after he finished his first degree at Cambridge
- he decided he wanted to learn more about statistics.
- So he sold all his physics books
- and went to study statistics at UCL.
- Brian: The portrait you’re painting of Richardson is of someone
- obviously a very good mathematician and a good physicist
- but also an experimental scientist
- when measurement needed to be made.
- Joanna: Yes, yes, he did that as well he wasn’t just a pure mathematician.
- Brian: When did he start his academic career?
- Joanna: So, he did his degree in Cambridge
- and after that it appears that he wasn’t really quite sure
- what he was going to do
- and he had a number of different little jobs here and there.
- Brian: So he wasn’t a traditional academic in a sense.
- He didn’t have a university career.
- Why did he not take up a chair at a university?
- Joanna: Of course it was the First World War.
- He was a Quaker and a concientious objector.
- So in the war he didn’t fight but he was on the ambulance service
- running out into No Man's Land and collecting people who were injured
- to take them back for treatment.
- They were in the trenches suffering
- from the mud and the rats and the shells and all the rest of it
- in exactly the same way as the active troops
- and yet because you were a conscientious objector
- you refused to actually fight, you were considered a coward.
- Anyone who was a conscientious objector
- was then barred from having a university post
- so by doing that that affected his career quite seriously.
- I knew about his numerical weather prediction
- and thats why I, sort of, started being interested in him in the first place.
- But the whole time he’s working
- he’s got this other strand going on.
- What he wanted to do was
- spend the first half of his career doing physics
- and the second half of the career doing something of use to humanity.
- After I understood about his moral values
- you know, I just thought he’s a real hero
- and you can see this strand of things right the way through.
- Brian: I suppose the ultimate expression of his work
- would be a computerised weather forecast
- that’s what he was actually doing
- although he didn’t know it at the time in 1910, 1920’s.
- Did he live to see it?
- Joanna: Absolutely. So the first numerical forecast was published in 1950.
- He didn’t die until 1953.
- He was aware of the forecast
- and he thought it was a great day for meteorology.
- And indeed he was right.
Joanna Haigh talks to Brian Cox about mathematician and physicist, Lewis Fry Richardson, and discusses his groundbreaking concept of a ‘weather forecasting factory’.
Find out more about Lewis Fry Richardson in our Google Arts and Culture exhibit:
Special thanks to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.
Archive credits:
Portrait of Lewis fry Richardson – © Godfrey Argent Studio
The Weather Forecasting factory © Stephen Conlin
Lewis Fry Richardson FAU personnel card © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain
AMB 2 FAU delivering bread © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain
About the Royal Society
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