Abstract
THE chair of mathematics at the Royal Holloway College, vacant through the resignation of Prof. Bevan Baker, has been filled by the appointment of Prof. W. H. McCrea. Since 1936 Prof. McCrea has been professor of mathematics at the Queen's University, Belfast, but for some time has been on leave in London on war service. Prof. McCrea had previously been an appointed teacher in the University of London, while holding an assistant professorship at the Imperial College during 1932–36, and during that time he took an active part in the scientific life of London, particularly in connexion with the Royal Astronomical Society. In addition to being an excellent teacher to university students over a wide range of mathematical ability and interest, his scope as a researcher is unusually extensive. He is specially distinguished for his researches in astrophysics, to which he has contributed many fertile ideas. His theory of the solar chromosphere, modifying an earlier theory by Prof. E. A. Milne which attributed the main support to selective radiation pressure, is generally accepted, and includes pioneer work that first showed the importance of turbulence for the structure of the sun's atmosphere. He also constructed a model of a stellar atmosphere based solely on physical as distinct from astronomical data, thereby initiating a method of investigation afterwards widely followed. Among his other astrophysical researches are a theory of the ejection of matter from 'new' stars (novæ), and a study of the drag of one gas on another through which it is streaming. Prof. McCrea has also shown marked originality in other fields, which include the quantum theory of specific heats and of quadrupole radiation, cosmological relativity theory, wave-tensor calculus, and differential and difference equations.
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Royal Holloway College: Chair of Mathematics. Nature 154, 482 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154482b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154482b0