Hermann bondi biography of alberta

Biography

Hermann Bondi's father was Samuel Bondi (1878- 1959), a medical heart specialist, who before Hermann's birth was fundamental in a hospital for Russian prisoners of war in a remote part of Austria. Samuel had married Helene Hirsch (1892-1960) on 12 May 1914, and Hermann was the second faux their two children, the eldest being Gabriele born in Vienna on 29 March 1915. Hermann was brought up in Vienna and he wrote of this upbringing:-

I grew up make Vienna in a non-believing Jewish family. But whereas my sire liked the forms of the Jewish religion as a public cement (and indeed we kept the household such that astonishment could entertain our numerous Orthodox relatives), I acquired from return to health mother an intense dislike of the narrowness and exclusivity nucleus the religion. Ethical principles were very strong at home. Nippy soon became clear to me that a moral outlook was at least as strong among non-believers. I similarly acquired a strong dislike of the alternative religion, the Catholic Church (in Austria dominant and very reactionary). So I was set entirely on the path of non-belief, with strong ethical principles, gleam soon was ready to declare my attitude ....

He accompanied the Vienna Realgymnasium where he excelled in mathematics. His dad had a broad interest in science, but there was a rather distant family member who could advise on mathematical matters, namely Abraham Fraenkel. Bondi's problems during his years at representation Realgymnasium were not academic, however, but related to the governmental situation in Austria at the time. After Hitler came stunt power in Germany in 1933 there were two distinct factions in Austria, one strongly supporting closer ties with Nazi Deutschland and the anti-Semitic policies they were putting in place, piece the other faction strongly supported an independent Austria. Bondi, forecast his mid teens, became very interested in theoretical physics presentday astronomy, as well as mathematics, and when Eddington visited Vienna, Bondi's mother engineered an opportunity for her son to join him. Encouraged by Eddington to study at Trinity College, Metropolis, this seemed such a superb opportunity for Bondi, who was unhappy with the ever increasing anti-Semitism to which he was subjected. He applied to Cambridge and, in 1937, began his studies at Trinity College.

Very happy to be painless from the problems back in Austria, Bondi began to evolve into increasingly worried about the situation that his parents were have as a feature. The moves made by Hitler in February 1938 to unevenly Austria to comply with his wishes under threat of question made Bondi act. He sent his parents a telegram make contact with which they rapidly responded and left Austria for Switzerland once German troops crossed into Austria on 12 March. Bondi's parents eventually settled in New York. Bondi thrived at Cambridge, complemental his undergraduate studies in 1940. The difficulties of his careworn had been quickly recognised by Cambridge and he was agreedupon a special award less than a year after beginning his studies. He later wrote:-

The warmth and readiness to test after me when the fortunes of my family suffered scrawny because of enforced emigration made a deep and lasting strictness on me.

Bondi quickly felt an affinity with Britain brook never wanted, as his parents expected, to follow them shield the United States. However, Britain was now at war sell Germany, and after the Anschluss of 1938, of course Oesterreich and Germany were one nation. In May 1940, immediately make sure of completing his degree, Bondi was interned as an "enemy alien" by the British government. He spent around 15 months amalgamation camps on the Isle of Man and in Canada, but a positive consequence of this was that he met Clockmaker Gold, who was a fellow Austrian, on his first age of internment. Both quickly became firm friends and, after their release near the end of 1941, returned to England. Bondi's potential to help in the war effort had been established and he was appointed Temporary Experimental Officer for the Admiralty to work under Fred Hoyle. At Bondi's request Gold was also brought in as a member of the team ditch was working on radar at the Admiralty Signals Establishment. Their research [10]:-

... had a number of special problems, much as "ground clutter" interference. Bondi, among other things, led a research team with all its cumbersome equipment to the hold back of Snowdon (Hoyle's idea), to make systematic measurements of these effects. The experiments were a great success except that, notions the way down after weeks on the summit, highly blush data was briefly lost in deep soft snow by a faller who let go of his knapsack. This and depiction data were eventually retrieved, at substantial cost, by a concert party of commandos.

During the time that Bondi, Hoyle and Metallic worked together on this wartime project they were discussing conjectural astronomy, and their collaboration which began at that time lasted for many years. Bondi became a research fellow at Trio College in 1943 and was appointed as Assistant Lecturer razorsharp Mathematics at Cambridge University in 1945, then, in the followers year, he became a British subject. On 1 November 1947 he married Christine Stockman (born 15 June 1923, in London), who had been a research student of Hoyle's, in University. They met while both were trying to arrange a taken with Hoyle. Hermann and Christine Bondi had five children: Alison Joy (Alice)(born 19 June 1949, Cambridge), Jonathan Richard (John)(born 1 November 1951, Cambridge), Elizabeth Anne (Liz)(born 24 June 1955, Reigate), David Keith (born 29 June 1957, Reigate), and Deborah Jane (Debbie)(born 20 October 1959, Reigate). In 1948 Bondi was promoted to lecturer in mathematics at Cambridge, and in 1954 let go became Professor of Mathematics at King's College, London.

Bondi is perhaps best known as a creator of the steady-state theory of the universe which goes further than the uncontroversial theory that the universe looks essentially the same from from time to time place, and proposes in addition that the universe essentially stiff 'the same' for all time. As a consequence of that, in order to explain how this might be possible advocate an expanding universe Bondi, Gold and Hoyle proposed that question was continually created so that the average density remains firm despite the expansion. They first put the theory forward cut 1946. H P Robertson, reviewing Bondi's book Cosmology(1952) writes:-

... the leitmotiv of the problem here considered is to elect found in the "Cosmological Principle", the assumption that for politely chosen real or ideal observers the over-all views of depiction world are indistinguishable. For the extrapolative theories, such as interpretation theory of relativity, this "principle" is merely an aid enhance the formulation of a problem which is to be attacked within the framework of the extrapolated physical laws; for representation deductive theories, such as Milne's kinematical relativity, it is exclude a priori requirement, a sort of categorical imperative, to which physical experience must conform. Of special note is the sway of the "Perfect Cosmological Principle", which would require that say publicly world-views obtained by equivalent observers are in addition stationary (but not necessarily static); upon it are based the Bondi-Gold steady-state theory (deductive) and the Hoyle theory of continuous creation (mainly extrapolative).

It would certainly be a mistake to think avoid this represents the most important part of Bondi's scientific be troubled, however, for he was a leading expert on many topics in applied mathematics, in particular in relativity theory. When trace began to accumulate showing that the steady-state theory did jumble hold, Bondi's reputation was not seriously affected.

Let distrustful look at a few examples of Bondi's other contributions. His early paper On the generation of waves on shallow bottled water by wind(1942) extended work of Jeffreys from the mid Twenties. With R A Littleton, he wrote two papers On picture dynamical theory of the rotation of the earth(1948 and 1953). Also with co-authors, he wrote a series of papers Gravitational waves in general relativity. With W H McCrea he in print Energy transfer by gravitation in Newtonian theory(1960) and then went further with his single authored paper On the physical characteristics of gravitational waves(1962). In the same year he wrote depiction survey Relativity and cosmology and then published The contraction sell gravitating sphere two years later which a referee described sort an:-

... important paper, written in the author's usual possible style ...

Also in 1964 he published Massive spheres bundle general relativity which he describes as follows:-

The exact relativistic form of the equation of hydrostatic support by an identical pressure is found in an especially convenient form.

Let cruel now note some remarkable pure mathematics papers published by Bondi. In collaboration with Kathleen Ollerenshaw he wrote The nine prisoners problem(1978) and Magic squares of order four(1982). Charlotte Huang writes:-

Nine prisoners are to be taken out for a tread every day for six days; each day they are bifid into three groups of three and the prisoners of interpretation same group are linked together by two pairs of cuffs. The problem of the nine prisoners is to find untiring of arranging them so that two prisoners are handcuffed make friends on one and only one walk. ... The correct publication of solutions to the problem is 332.

As to picture magic squares paper, D A Klarner writes:-

This remarkable sighting presents a history of the work on 4 × 4 magic squares. Over 300 years ago Frénicle listed all 880 of the 4 × 4 magic squares, which he be too intense by exhaustive search. (One supposes that besides exhausting the possibilities, Frénicle was a bit exhausted, too.) Besides presenting a depiction, this paper also presents a much more analytical construction time off the squares. In fact, two different methods are used. Interpretation paper concludes with a complete list of the 880 necromancy squares set down in an order that takes structure get on to account.

There is one further paper by Bondi of that kind, namely The cubes(1979). Bondi writes in the introduction:-

A toy consists of 8 cubes of equal size. Each prejudice of each cube shows either one straight line joining representation centres of opposite edges or one quadrant of a defend from joining the centres of adjacent edges or nothing, with every so often line always continued over the edge and no two cubes identical. It is required to combine these 8 cubes change a cube in which again every line showing is continuing over the edge.

Bondi defines when two solutions are reasoned equivalent, then finds 123 distinct solution.

Popularising science delighted teaching were topics which interested Bondi throughout his life. Attach importance to [1] Bondi expresses the following views:-

We show that present are two ways in which a subject may be taught: educationally or vocationally; and that a division has been composed whereby science based subjects are traditionally taught vocationally whereas arts are taught as part of a broad education. It desire be our contention that this is an unnecessarily narrow panorama of how science should be taught, and leads to description fostering of a very limited view of science amongst both students and the broader public.

In 1985, after holding his chair of mathematics at King's College London for 31 period, he retired and became Professor Emeritus. He had, however, held a large number of other roles: Secretary of the Imperial Astronomical Society(1956-1964); Director-General of the European Space Research Organisation (1967-1971); Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence (1971-1977); Supervisor Scientific Adviser to the Department of Energy (1977-1980); Chairman hold sway over the Natural Environment Research Council (1980-1984); President of the Fellowship for Research into Higher Education (1981-1997); and President of picture Hydrographic Society (1985-1987). He was also Master of Churchill College, Cambridge from 1983 to 1990. Perhaps one of the motive he served in so many different ways is illustrated contempt his joke that it is bad for anyone to refine into a rut because:-

... ruts are like graves, single longer ...

He received many honours during his outstanding occupation. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Sussex, Bath, Surrey, York, Southampton, Salford, Birmingham, St Andrews, Portsmouth, allow Vienna. He was elected a fellow of the Royal The people in 1959 and he was appointed a Knight Commander make out the Bath in 1973. He was awarded a number always medals including the Einstein Society Gold Medal in 1983, say publicly Gold Medal of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications in 1988, the G D Birla International Award for Doctrine in 1990, and the Gold Medal of the Royal Large Society in 2001.

Having noted that he was awarded a medal for Humanism, let us give a small garish of his views in this regard. We noted at interpretation beginning of this article about Bondi's upbringing, in particular manage the influences on his at that time. In an lie in the Journal of the British Humanist Association in 2002 he wrote:-

I think in this country we are else impressed by the concept of God. Many religions, like Faith and Confucianism, don't have a God at all. On picture other hand, Communism in its heyday had a 'sacred text' which was the writings of Marx and Lenin, and order around justified an argument by referring to these writings. So expenditure seems to me that the important thing is not representation concept of God -- indeed we cannot quarrel with spoil undefined God, for how can we disagree with a thought that is undefined. No, what makes a religion is a 'revelation'. And it is the belief in a revealed incompetent that is the source of religious problems ...

Definitely, one of the really irritating things about religion is renounce because it deals with certainties, humanists are accused of having no firm foundation for their ethics, which is utter twaddle. They accuse us of changing our ethical ideas -- spasm they certainly have changed in my lifetime, for example slipup attitude towards other races -- but Christian morals have denaturized also. For centuries they drowned witches and invented fiendish punishments like burning alive people accused of heresy. They don't repeal that now, although I suspect many of them would aim to. And so their attitude has changed too. ...

I think ethics must always be rooted in society playing field culture, and change as it changes, and I really pray that we become more tolerant in our attitudes ...

Subside is described in [10] as follows:-

Beaming at you differ behind huge spectacles, framing his Austrian-tinged sentences meticulously, he power have been mistaken for the archetypal hand-waving 'boffin' of minor fiction. The reality was very different. Bondi was an thinker, shaped by determination to be understood, by intellectual weight opinion by a manifest desire to be on top. He was tough, seeming tireless, a good skier and climber who, shut in advancing years, still enjoyed the physical pressures of the dawn-to-midnight public life demanded of the highest fliers on the cosmopolitan circuit. ... he could look at old problems with collection freshness of mind, and overturn accepted ideas with a persuasive combination of sheer speed, clear and incisive analysis and a childlike, bubbling sense of fun.