James Jeans

Sir James Hopwood Jeans (11 September 1877 – 16 September 1946) was an English physicist, mathematician and an astronomer. He served as a secretary of the Royal Society from 1919 to 1929, and was the president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1925 to 1927, and won its Gold Medal.

Early life

Born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, the son of William Tulloch Jeans, a parliamentary correspondent and author. Jeans was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Wilson's Grammar School, Camberwell and Trinity College, Cambridge.

As a gifted student, Jeans was counselled to take an aggressive approach to the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos competition:

Early in the Michaelmas term of 1896, Walker sent for Jeans and Hardy and advised them to take Part I of the Mathematical Tripos in two years. He told them that he could not guarantee that they would come out higher than fifteenth in the list of wranglers, but he understood that they would never regret it. They accepted his advice, and went to R. R. Webb, the most famous private coach of the period... At the end of his first year, [Jeans] told Walker that he had quarrelled with Webb, his coach. Walker accordingly took Jeans himself, and the result was a triumph:... Jeans was bracketed second wrangler with J. F. Cameron... [and] R.W.H.T. Hudson was Senior Wrangler and G. H. Hardy fourth wrangler.

Career

Jeans was elected Fellow of Trinity College in October 1901, and taught at Cambridge, but went to Princeton University in 1904 as a professor of applied mathematics. He returned to Cambridge in 1910.