Ernest William Brown was a British mathematician and scientist whose filed of specialty was in celestial mechanics. He is noted for his work that focused on lunar theory (the study of the Moon's motion). His publications include An Introductory Treatise on the Lunar Theory (1896) and Tables of the Motion of the Moon (1919).
Background
Ernest William Brown was born on November 29, 1866, in Hull, England, the second of four children of William and Emma Brown (née Martin). His father was originally a farmer and later became a timber merchant. His mother and younger brother died of scarlet fever in 1870, when Brown was not quite 4 years old. He and his two sisters were then looked after by a maiden aunt until his father remarried five years later.
Education
Brown was educated at Totteridge Park School, Hertfordshire (now part of Dorset House School) and Hull and East Riding College. Then Brown, who early excelled in mathematics, won a scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1884, and maintained close ties with that school throughout his life: he received a Bachelor of Arts as sixth wrangler (1887), Master of Arts (1891), and Doctor of Science (1897); and was a fellow (1889-1895) and honorary fellow (1911-1938).
In 1891 Brown moved to the United States to become an instructor in, and later (1893) professor of mathematics at Haverford College. Brown went to Yale University in 1907 - largely because Yale agreed to support the computing and publishing of his lunar tables - and he remained there as a professor, Sterling professor of mathematics (1921-1931), the first Josiah Willard Gibbs professor of mathematics (1931-1932), and professor emeritus. Among his many honors were those from the Royal Society of London (fellowship, 1897; Royal Medal, 1914) and from the National Academy of Sciences (membership, 1923; Watson Medal, 1937).
By 1908 Brown had worked out, and published in five papers, his theory of the motion of the moon. Following Hill’s example, he attacked the moon’s motion as an idealized problem of three bodies, assuming the sun, earth, and moon to be spherical and the center of the earth-moon system to move in an elliptical orbit about the sun; he then considered inequalities resulting from the actual figures of the earth and moon, and the direct and indirect gravitational attractions of the other planets.
Brown’s main objective was a new, accurate calculation of each coefficient in longitude, latitude, and parallax as great as one-hundredth of a second of arc, and the result was not to be in error by more than that amount; in fact, he included many terms with coefficients one order of magnitude smaller. Among the few lunar motions, he could not account for by gravitation was the relatively large fluctuation in mean longitude; after rejecting numerous other possibilities, he explained this apparent deviation by irregular variations in the earth’s rate of rotation.
After developing his lunar theory Brown proceeded, with the assistance of Henry B. Hedrick, to use it to construct new tables of the moon’s motion. The numerical values of the constants were obtained by comparing the theory with 150 years of Greenwich observations, as analyzed by Philip H. Cowell. The tables were designed for actual computation of the moon’s position, and in 1923 they were adopted by most national ephemerides.
Although Brown included nearly 1,500 terms - nearly five times as many as had Peter Andreas Hansen, the author of the previously used table - the format of his tables made them as convenient to use as were Hansen’s. The remainder of his work concerned the interaction of other members of the solar system, such as the Trojan group of asteroids, and the negligible gravitational attraction of Pluto for Uranus and Neptune.
Brown returned to Cambridge almost every summer, but he worked chiefly in the United States. He accepted an appointment at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, in 1891, and was a professor of mathematics at Yale University from 1907 until his retirement in 1932.
While still a student, Brown was encouraged by his professor, George Howard Darwin, to study George Hill’s papers on lunar theory, and from that time on, he devoted himself to reconciling lunar theory and observations by finding the most accurate way and by the shortest path the complete effect of the law of gravitation applied to the moon.
Membership
In 1889, Brown had joined the Royal Astronomical Society and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1898.
Royal Society of London
,
United Kingdom
1898 - 1938
Personality
Of elegant presence and of an unassuming friendly character, Ernest Brown was a welcome guest to British astronomers on his occasional visits to his native country.
Brown was in the habit of going to bed early and as a consequence woke up between three and five o'clock in the morning. After having fortified himself with strong coffee from a thermos bottle he set to work without leaving his bed, smoking numerous cigarettes. His serious scientific work was thus done before he got up for breakfast at nine o'clock.
Brown knew how to play as well as to work. In his youth, he was addicted to rowing and to mountain climbing. He kept up his piano playing and up to within a few years of his death, he was an excellent performer, until, in fact, palsy made it increasingly difficult for him to strike the keys accurately. But he continued to take great pleasure in music in all its forms. He was for a time the head of the New Haven Oratorio Society. He was fond of chess and played a good game; of late years he gave up this amusement as being too severe a mental tax. He then took to cards, especially bridge, but he did not make a conspicuous success of this game. He was an authority on the nonsense verse and could recite without a slip long extracts from Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas, from the Bab Ballads and from Lewis Carroll's verse. In his earlier years, he read the English classics, but later he devoted his reading time to the detective story. He was an inveterate traveler and used to attend a great number of meetings, scientific and other.
Physical Characteristics:
From his early manhood, Brown was affected by bronchial troubles, probably as a result of his rowing activities. Just before his retirement in 1932, he suffered an attack of intestinal ulcers. He refused to take the usual treatment for this complaint, admonishing his physician not to try to prolong his life but simply to make him as comfortable as possible. Strange to say this illness cured itself, but left him in a much-weakened condition, and the six years that were left to him were a constant struggle for health.
Interests
music, chess, traveling
Sport & Clubs
climbing, golf, rowing
Connections
Ernest William Brown never married, and for most of his adult life lived with his unmarried younger sister, Mildred, who kept house for him. She made it her job to shield him from "cares and disturbances" and succeeded in "utterly" spoiling him. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1923.