Edward arthur milne biography of william hill

Mathematician, Astrophysicist, Cosmologist

Arthur Milne was born in Hull to a modest family with deep Yorkshire roots.

From Hymers College, where he had a free place, he won enough scholarships (five) to pay for his university education at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Edward arthur milne biography of william hill

He came under the influence of the mathematician GH Hardy, but in , at the invitation of the Nobel polymath AV Hill, Milne abandoned his studies to develop a height-finding device, designed by Horace Darwin, for anti-aircraft gunnery.

At HMS Excellent in Portsmouth, Hill’s team transformed gunnery by taking a scientific approach and Milne was commissioned a Lieutenant, RNVR. (The Army had rejected him for poor eyesight.)

Lieutenant Milne

Ballistics unlocked Milne’s mathematical originality.

He quantified the behaviour of winds in the upper atmosphere, essential for high-angle shells; he corrected faulty formulae; he refined the mathematics of sound for huge listening trumpets that located