Biographical Memoirs Volume 48 (1976) / Chapter Skim
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Carl Henry Eckart
Carl Henry Eckart
Pages 194-219
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From page 195... ...
For ten years he directed the University of California Division of War Research and its successor, the Marine Physical Laboratory. For two years he was Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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From page 196... ...
on wave mechanics appeared in the Annalen der Physik, Eckart immediately recognized its revolutionary content. There was, in particular, the puzzling presence of another formulation alternative to Schrodinger's wave mechanics: the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg, which used not the partial differential equation for matter waves, but rather infinite-ordered matrices.
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From page 197... ...
Here he worked on the quantum mechanical behavior of simple oscillators using Schrodinger's equation, developing further the operator calculus that would allow rapid and almost mechanical manipulations of the newly discovered matrix mechanics and gaining new insights into the correspondence principle. Applications were made to the electron theory of metallic conduction using Fermi statistics, with particular attention to the Volta effect.
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From page 198... ...
Honl) on the foundations of wave mechanics, an exposition of the role of group theory in the quantum dynamics of monatomic systems, and the comparisons of the nuclear theories of Heisenberg and Wigner.
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From page 199... ...
. He was not successful in extending the formulation to contain as special cases Schrodinger's, Heisenberg's, and Dirac's equations of electrodynamics, but his approach did yield equations closely resembling these famous equations and also portions of gas theory for irrotational motion.
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O Knudsen, director of the embryonic University of California Division of War Research, and his close associate L
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, we can trace his growing interest in the problems of sound attenuation in the sea, in the effect of randomly moving sea surfaces on the reflection of sound waves and electromagnetic waves, and in the analysis of time series of acoustical signals. Following the war, Eckart collected his work and the work of others into Principles and A pplications of Underwater Sound, first issued in 1946, declassified in 1954, and reprinted in 1968.
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From page 202... ...
The Einstein equations changed the passive role of space-time to an active one by equating the Einstein curvature tensor of space-time to the energy momentum tensor of matter. In this way, seemingly empty space between atoms, planets, and stars responded to their presence by accommodating its curvature; and the matter in turn evolved and moved in response to space's curvature.
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From page 203... ...
The rigor in definition and precision of thought, and the inability to leave any loose strings untied, which were his great strengths as a scientist, were just what was not needed as an administrator. I remember he spent a good deal of time trying to tidy the Scripps Institution up; it was quite a messy place in those days and this was a completely frustrating job for him.
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From page 204... ...
Several generations of students were to benefit from his outstanding teaching abilities. Many of Eckart's studies are in the form of lecture notes and Scripps reports that have never been published.
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From page 205... ...
At about the same time Walter Munk gave a seminar on the wandering of the Earth's poles, based on the concept of a "Maxwell body" that exhibits the property of a viscous fluid under low-frequency disturbances and that of a solid at high frequencies. Eckart questioned Munk strenuously concerning this use of the "Maxwell solid," and when Munk gave as his defense that the model had been used by everyone, including Lord Kelvin himself, Eckart said that this was no excuse whatsoever.
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From page 206... ...
"Relation Between Time Averages and Ensemble Averages in the Statistical Dynamics of Continuous Media" expanded the idea of using the equations of the dynamics of a continuum to aid in studying the connections between time and ensemble averages. "Generation of Wind Waves on a Water Surface" developed the theory of ocean wave generation by random wind gusts.
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From page 207... ...
Out of the many possible mathematical formulations of this subject, Eckart characteristically chose that which was most elegant mathematically and, to him, physically meaningful. In particular, he departed from the usual way of representing the sea motion by its surface elevation function and instead used a normalized entropy function.
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From page 208... ...
Such a formula is useful, for example, in determining accurately the eigenmodes of internal waves in the sea, a subject that then occupied Eckart. In this period he wrote a closely connected pair of papers on the stability of unidirectional laminar flow of a stratified compressible fluid.
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From page 209... ...
Carl Eckart, always shy, remained somewhat aloof from the social activities of La Jolla, then a maturing seaside village. After the death of Eckart's great and good friend John van Neumann, Klara van Neumann turned to Carl Eckart for solace and companionship.
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From page 210... ...
The evolving manuscript was called, "Our Modern Idol: Mathematical Science." Eckart found that the promise of mathematical science in furthering man's social progress was hollow. This realization, though unpleasant for him at the time, was in the end salutary.
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From page 211... ...
Eckart made three applications of this classification: to the long-standing problems of the faulty development of knowledge and its faulty communication from one generation to another; to the needless mental confusion of ethical and scientific matters; and last and most painful for him, to the seeming impotence of mathematical reasoning to show society the way clear of its political, economic, and social problems. These applications were developed by Eckart in a series of several dozen essays over a span of 2,000 handwritten pages, showing his concern for social progress and the responsibility of scientists to assure the proper use of their discoveries.
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From page 212... ...
Nevertheless, in the thirty or so years between the time when he thought he could solve the problems and the times when he thought that they were unsolvable, he provided inspiration to a generation of oceanographers. Eckart was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1953 and received the Academy's Alexander Agassiz Medal in 1966.
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From page 213... ...
Rev., 26:454-64. # Available at the Library of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego.
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USA, 12:684-87. 1928 Ober die Elektronentheorie der Metalle auf Grund der Fermischen Statistic, insbensondere uber den Volta-Effekt.
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A principal axis transformation for non-hermitian matrices. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 45: 118-21.
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7, 1954. Reprinted and redistributed by Department of the Navy Headquarters Naval Material Command, Washington, D.C., lg68.
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Am., 25: 566-70. Relation between time averages and ensemble averages in the statistical dynamics of continuous media.
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The steady flow of a heavy inviscid fluid of constant density. (Notes based on lectures, fall semester, 1957-58)
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From page 219... ...
(Lecture notes, Oceanography 222, winter quarter) Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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