Harry Bateman, 1882-1946

Abstract

Harry Bateman was born on 29 May 1882 in Manchester, the son of Samuel Bateman, a pharmaceutical chemist, and his wife Marnie Elizabeth, nee Bond. From Manchester Grammar School he gained an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, coming into residence in 1900. In June 1903 he took his degree as Senior Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos (bracketed with P. E. Marrack). A year later he took Part II of the Mathematical Tripos, being placed in Class I, Division 1, and after yet another year he was awarded the Smith’s Prize for an essay on differential equations and became a Fellow of Trinity College. The years 1905 and 1906 were spent in travel on the continent and study in Göttingen and Paris. Instead of considering his publications in order, we shall group them according to their subjects and consider in each group the most interesting papers only. As this method disrupts the chronological order we shall first notice briefly the most important biographical details. After his return from the continent of Europe, Bateman was appointed to a lectureship at Liverpool University, a position which he exchanged in 1907 for that of a reader in mathematical physics at the University of Manchester. In 1910 he removed to the United States, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. For two years he was a lecturer at Bryn Mawr College; and from 1912 to 1915 a Johnston Scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, incidentally taking his Ph.D. degree in 1913, a procedure curious in a man of his eminence. (At this time he had published some sixty papers, among them his celebrated researches on the Maxwell equations, and the monumental report on integral equations.) After this he became lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, an appointment which he held until 1917 when he finally settled down in Pasadena, holding chairs in mathematics, theoretical physics, and aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology. The manifold character of his appointments is an indication of his versatility and encyclopedic learning.