Profile of Keith Moffatt

Abstract

Keith Moffatt was born in 1935 and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was four years old when his father left home to serve in the Second World War. “At that age, you accept things,” Moffatt recalls. “It was a time of great shortage. Everything in the UK was rationed—food, clothes, fuel, even sweets!” Keith Moffatt. Photo by Jill Paton-Walsh. His Royal Highness Prince Philip visits the Newton Institute, October 1992. Keith Moffatt ( Left ) demonstrates the production of a cusp singularity at a free surface. Sir Michael Atiyah, Founder Director of the Institute ( Right ). Photo courtesy of MM Photographic. The elder Moffatt, an accountant, had introduced his son to mathematical games and arithmetic puzzles, and, when he returned at the war’s end in 1945, recreational mathematics recommenced. The early tutelage had a lasting effect: Moffatt’s facility with numbers would transform into an aptitude for applied mathematics and its use in fluid mechanics and astrophysics. His contributions to our understanding of magnetic and spin fields as well as his advocacy for the study of mathematics around the world have earned him fellowships in the Royal Societies of both London and Edinburgh. A 2005 recipient of the Royal Society of London’s Hughes Medal, he serves as an emeritus professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge. He was elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008. Moffatt completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. He left Scotland for Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1957, where he came under the influence of George Batchelor, an Australian fluid dynamicist. Batchelor set Moffatt to work on his first research project and played a decisive role in his career. “George was very sympathetic to students who came from outside Cambridge, as it had been his own career path,” …