Carl Anton Bjerknes

Carl Anton Bjerknes
Carl Anton Bjerknes
Born	(1825-10-24)24 October 1825 Oslo, Norway
Died	20 March 1903(1903-03-20) (aged 77) Oslo
Residence	Norway
Nationality	Norwegian
Fields	Mathematician, Physicist
Institutions	University of Oslo
Alma mater	University of Oslo
Doctoral students	Sophus Lie
Known for	studies in hydrodynamics, mechanical explanation of gravitation
Notable awards	Gold Medal International Exposition of Electricity in Paris

Carl Anton Bjerknes (Norwegian: [ˈbjærknəs]; 24 October 1825 – 20 March 1903) was a Norwegian mathematician and physicist. Bjerknes' earlier work was in pure mathematics, but he is principally known for his studies in hydrodynamics.

Carl Anton Bjerknes was born in Oslo, Norway. His father was Abraham Isaksen Bjerknes and his mother Elen Birgitte Holmen. Bjerknes studied mining at the University of Oslo, and after that mathematics at the University of Göttingen and the University of Paris. In 1866 he held a chair for applied mathematics and in 1869 for mathematics. Over a fifty-year time period, Bjerknes taught mathematics at the University of Oslo and at the military college.

A pupil of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, Gabriel Lamé and Augustin-Louis Cauchy Bjerknes worked for the rest of his life in the field of hydrodynamics. He tried to explain the electrodynamics of James Clerk Maxwell by hydrodynamical analogies and similarly he proposed a mechanical explanation of gravitation. Although he did not succeed in his attempts to explain all those things, his findings in the field of hydrodynamics were important. His experiments were shown at the first International Exposition of Electricity in Paris that ran from August 15, 1881 through to November 15, 1881 at the Palais de l'Industrie on the Champs-Élysées and at the Scandinavian naturalist meeting in .