Douglas Rayner Hartree: His Life in Science and Computing (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Douglas Rayner Hartree: His Life in Science and Computing Mary Croarken (bio) Douglas Rayner Hartree: His Life in Science and Computing. By Charlotte Froese Fischer. London: World Scientific Publishing, 2003. Pp. xviii+224. $67. Through his work on the self-consistent field method, Douglas Hartree made important contributions to the foundations of modern atomic theory and to quantum chemistry. In addition, he was instrumental in the development of differential analyzers in Britain and, more important, an influential supporter and promoter of the electronic digital computer during the postwar period. People who know about one facet of his work will often be unaware of the significant contributions he made in the other. In this book Charlotte Fischer brings together the two aspects of his work and clearly demonstrates that the common denominator was his ability to express and solve problems in the form of ordinary or partial differential equations. The book begins with a chronology of the main events in Hartree's career and a Hartree family tree. Good use is made of family photographs. Fischer then presents a history of the Hartree family and Douglas Hartree's early life and education, laying the foundations for understanding the strong collaborative relationship he had with his father William. Both men worked with A. V. Hill during World War I on antiaircraft ballistics problems. For Douglas, this was the start of his interest in differential equations and in numerical methods for their solution. Fischer then takes Hartree's career from research student in the Cavendish Laboratory to his appointment to the chair of applied mathematics at the University of Manchester in 1929. She describes his contributions to quantum chemistry during the 1920s and the scientific circles that he was a part of: characters such as Einstein, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, and Robert Lindsay populate the text. She uses Hartree's scientific correspondence of [End Page 859] the period to draw a picture of the culture of scientific exchange and debate, and she sometimes presents differential equations in order to help explain Hartree's achievements. In the middle section of the book, Fischer tells how Hartree began to work with Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer at MIT during the 1930s, eventually bringing this back to Britain. He used the differential analyzer to address problems in control theory, fluid mechanics, and other fields. During World War II he took on many practical and advisory roles within the British Ministry of Supply. His war work, his abilities as a theoretical physicist, and his interest in computation placed him in a perfect position to understand the ENIAC and EDVAC electronic computing developments taking place in the United States toward the end of the war. The final section concentrates on how Hartree promoted, often behind the scenes, the building of computers at Cambridge, Manchester, and the National Physical Laboratory, contributed to the emerging discipline of numerical analysis, and became one of the most influential players in British computing during the late 1940s and 1950s. Fischer's book is an affectionate tribute from a student of Hartree. It pulls together the different strands of his career, making connections in the context of their day. More important, it demonstrates that computer history need not focus solely on engineering developments, business practice, or software, but can also consider the motivating force of computational need, the necessity of finding solutions to problems. Mary Croarken Dr. Croarken is a visiting fellow in the Computer Science Department of the University of Warwick. She has written widely on pre-1950s computing in Britain. Copyright © 2005 The Society for the History of Technology