Knott was educated at Arbroath High School in Angus.
College/University
Gallery of Cargill Knott
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland
Knott attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied alongside James Alfred Ewing. He worked on various aspects of electricity and magnetism, obtaining his doctorate in 1879.
Knott attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied alongside James Alfred Ewing. He worked on various aspects of electricity and magnetism, obtaining his doctorate in 1879.
Cargill Gilston Knott was a Scottish mathematician and physicist who specialized in seismological research. He spent his early career in Japan, devising with the help of his colleagues the prototype instruments which evolved into the modern seismograph, and was later appointed a professor at Tokyo Imperial University. Later in Scotland he served as a Reader in Applied Mathematics at Edinburgh University.
Background
Cargill Gilston Knott was born on June 30, 1856, in Penicuik, Scotland. He was the son of Pelham Knott, an agent for a paper manufacturer, and his wife Ellen. The father died young, so Knott was brought up by his uncle, the artist Tavernor Knott, and his aunt Sophia M. Knott. His second uncle was Lavernor Knott.
Education
Knott was educated at Arbroath High School in Angus, and attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied alongside James Alfred Ewing. He worked on various aspects of electricity and magnetism, obtaining his doctorate in 1879.
In 1879 Knott became assistant to Peter Guthrie Tait in the Department of Natural Philosophy. In 1883 he left Edinburgh to become a professor of physics at the Imperial University of Japan. He returned to Edinburgh in 1891 as lecturer, later reader, in applied mathematics, and held this position until 1922.
Knott’s contributions were chiefly on the mathematical side. He utilized the observational results of his colleagues to pioneer the application of seismology to determine the internal mechanical properties of the earth. In the course of this work, he traced the connection between the times taken by earthquake waves in traveling from the center of the disturbance through the earth’s interior to seismic recording stations, and worked out many of the detailed physical characteristics of the waves. These and other pioneering results formed the basis of many later researches on the interior of the earth.
On arriving in Japan, Knott became a member of the famous group, which included J. Milne, M. Ewing, and T. Gray from Britain, and several Japanese scientists, who inaugurated the modem era in earthquake study. While in Japan, Knott also organized and supervised the first comprehensive magnetic survey of Japan. Many of his pupils and their pupils became Japan’s leading investigators of the earth’s magnetic field. In addition, he investigated Japanese volcanic eruptions.
Knott was a zealous officeholder in the United Free Church of Scotland.
Views
Quotations:
"Scientific theory and its application to the growing needs of mankind advance hand in hand."
"What may appear as a towering peak to one may seem but an ordinary eminence to another."
Membership
Knott was a principal founder of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, president of the Scottish Meteorological Society (now the Royal Meteorological Society), fellow of the Royal Society, and energetic secretary and later fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh Mathematical Society
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United Kingdom
Royal Society of Edinburgh
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United Kingdom
Royal Meteorological Society
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United Kingdom
Royal Society
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United Kingdom
Connections
In Tokyo Knott married a Scottish lady, Mary Dixon, the sister of James Main Dixon, the professor of English at Tokyo Imperial University.