Lewis Fry Richardson
Encyclopedia
Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS (11 October 1881 - 30 September 1953) was an English
mathematician
, physicist
, meteorologist, psychologist
and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work on fractal
s and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration
.
At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school
, Bootham
in York
, where he received an excellent education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history
. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University
) where he took courses in mathematical physics
, chemistry
, botany
, and zoology
. Two years later, he gained a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge
, where he graduated with first-class honours in the natural sciences tripos in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London
.
In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility in blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927.
Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson
, became a noted actor.
In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society
that exempted him from military service during World War I
as a conscientious objector
, though this subsequently disqualified him from holding any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit
attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry
in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism
had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers led him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish.
led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting
by solution of differential equation
s, the method used today, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus:
(The word computers is used here in its original sense - people who did computations, not machines. Calculator also referred to people at this time.)
When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC
, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24 hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce.
He was also interested in atmospheric
turbulence
and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter in the theory of turbulence is named after him. He famously summarised the field in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66):
[A play on Augustus De Morgan
's rewording of Jonathan Swift
, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)].
. As Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge 145 hectopascals (4.3 inHg) rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually stayed more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast turns out to be essentially accurate — a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France.
and Pitirim Sorokin
as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding
, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle
), of the scientific analysis of conflict; an interdisciplinary field of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analyzed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealized system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be drawn regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations.
He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1950), he sought to statistically analyze the causes of war. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer."
In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic
scale for conflicts. In other words, there are far more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution
. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago
and Shanghai
. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organization (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores).
between two countries, Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability
of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. While collecting data, he realised that there was considerable variation in the various gazetted lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain
and Portugal
was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km
while that between the Netherlands
and Belgium
as 380 or 449 km.
As part of his research, Richardson investigated how the measured length of a border changes as the unit of measurement is changed. He published empirical statistics which led to a conjectured relationship. This research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot
in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain?
Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat again:
Notice that the smaller the ruler, the larger the result. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the "true" length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that the measured length of coastlines and other natural features appears to increase without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. Today this is known as the Richardson effect.
At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is seen as one element in the birth of the modern study of fractal
s.
in air. A month later he filed a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, foreseeing the invention of sonar
by Paul Langevin
and Robert Boyle
6 years later.
's novel Turbulence.
Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner
's work, The Sheep Look Up
where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable.
for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU by 2004).
Winners have been:
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, meteorologist, psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work on fractal
Fractal
A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
s and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration
Modified Richardson iteration
Modified Richardson iteration is an iterative method for solving a system of linear equations. Richardson iteration was proposed by Lewis Richardson in his work dated 1910...
.
Family life and education
Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838–1919) and David Richardson (1835–1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson running a successful tanning and leather manufacturing business.At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
, Bootham
Bootham School
Bootham School is an independent Quaker boarding school in the city of York in North Yorkshire, England. It was founded by the Religious Society of Friends in 1823. It is close to York Minster. The current headmaster is Jonathan Taylor. The school's motto Membra Sumus Corporis Magni means "We...
in York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
, where he received an excellent education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University
Durham University
The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...
) where he took courses in mathematical physics
Mathematical physics
Mathematical physics refers to development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The Journal of Mathematical Physics defines this area as: "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the development of mathematical methods suitable for such applications and...
, chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, and zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
. Two years later, he gained a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
, where he graduated with first-class honours in the natural sciences tripos in 1903. At age 47 he received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
.
In 1909 he married Dorothy Garnett (1885–1956), daughter of the mathematician and physicist William Garnett. They were unable to have children due to an incompatibility in blood types, but they adopted two sons and a daughter between 1920 and 1927.
Richardson's nephew Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
, became a noted actor.
Career
Richardson's working life reflected his eclectic interests:- National Physical LaboratoryNational Physical Laboratory, UKThe National Physical Laboratory is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, England. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK.-Description:...
(1903–1904) - University College AberystwythUniversity of Wales, AberystwythAberystwyth University is a university located in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding Member Institution of the former federal University of Wales. As of late 2006, the university had over 12,000 students spread across seventeen academic departments.The university was founded in 1872 as...
(1905–1906) - chemistChemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
, National Peat Industries (1906–1907) - National Physical LaboratoryNational Physical Laboratory, UKThe National Physical Laboratory is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, England. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK.-Description:...
(1907–1909) - manager of the physical and chemical laboratory, Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909–1912)
- Manchester College of Technology (1912–1913)
- Meteorological OfficeMet OfficeThe Met Office , is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and a trading fund of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
- as superintendent of Eskdalemuir ObservatoryEskdalemuir ObservatoryThe Eskdalemuir Observatory is located near Eskdalemuir, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Built in 1904, its remote location was chosen to minimise electrical interference with geomagnetic instruments, which were relocated there from Kew Observatory in 1908 after the advent of electrification in...
(1913–1916) - Friends Ambulance Unit in France (1916–1919)
- Meteorological Office at Benson, OxfordshireBenson, OxfordshireBenson is a village and civil parish in South Oxfordshire, England. It is about north of Wallingford at the foot of the Chiltern Hills at the confluence of a chalk stream and the River Thames, next to Benson Lock...
(1919–1920) - Head of the PhysicsPhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
Department at Westminster Training College (1920–1929) - Principal, Paisley Technical College, now part of the University of the West of Scotland (1929–1940)
In 1926, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
Pacifism
Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifismPacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
that exempted him from military service during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
, though this subsequently disqualified him from holding any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Unit
Friends' Ambulance Unit
The Friends' Ambulance Unit was a volunteer ambulance service, founded by individual members of the British Religious Society of Friends , in line with their Peace Testimony. The FAU operated from 1914–1919, 1939–1946 and 1946-1959 in 25 different countries around the world...
attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the British Government with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964...
in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. His pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
had direct consequences on his research interests. According to Thomas Körner, the discovery that his meteorological work was of value to chemical weapons designers led him to abandon all his efforts in this field, and destroy findings that he had yet to publish.
Weather forecasting
Richardson's interest in meteorologyMeteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting
Weather forecasting
Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a given location. Human beings have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia, and formally since the nineteenth century...
by solution of differential equation
Differential equation
A differential equation is a mathematical equation for an unknown function of one or several variables that relates the values of the function itself and its derivatives of various orders...
s, the method used today, though when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He described his ideas thus:
“After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit.
A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map.
From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand.
Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar.
In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But these is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely.” (Richardson 1922)
(The word computers is used here in its original sense - people who did computations, not machines. Calculator also referred to people at this time.)
When news of the first weather forecast by the first modern computer, ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
, was received by Richardson in 1950, he responded that the results were an "enormous scientific advance." The first calculations for a 24 hour forecast took ENIAC nearly 24 hours to produce.
He was also interested in atmospheric
Earth's atmosphere
The atmosphere of Earth is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention , and reducing temperature extremes between day and night...
turbulence
Turbulence
In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time...
and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter in the theory of turbulence is named after him. He famously summarised the field in rhyming verse in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (p 66):
Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity,
- and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity.
[A play on Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....
's rewording of Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (A Budget of Paradoxes, 1915)].
Richardson's attempt at numerical forecast
One of Richardson's most celebrated achievements is his attempt in hind sight to forecast the weather during a single day — 20 May 1910 — by direct computation. At the time, meteorologists carried out forecasts principally by looking for similar weather patterns from past records, and then extrapolating forward. Richardson attempted to use a mathematical model of the principal features of the atmosphere, and use data taken at a specific time (7 AM) to calculate the weather six hours later Ab initioAb initio
ab initio is a Latin term used in English, meaning from the beginning.ab initio may also refer to:* Ab Initio , a leading ETL Tool Software Company in the field of Data Warehousing.* ab initio quantum chemistry methods...
. As Lynch makes clear, Richardson's forecast failed dramatically, predicting a huge 145 hectopascals (4.3 inHg) rise in pressure over six hours when the pressure actually stayed more or less static. However, detailed analysis by Lynch has shown that the cause was a failure to apply smoothing techniques to the data, which rule out unphysical surges in pressure. When these are applied, Richardson's forecast turns out to be essentially accurate — a remarkable achievement considering the calculations were done by hand, and while Richardson was serving with the Quaker ambulance unit in northern France.
Mathematical analysis of war
Richardson also applied his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the roots of international conflict. For this reason, today he is considered the founder, or co-founder (with Quincy WrightQuincy Wright
Philip Quincy Wright was an American political scientist known for his pioneering work and expertise in international law and international relations.- Biography :...
and Pitirim Sorokin
Pitirim Sorokin
Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin was a Russian-American sociologist born in Komi . Academic and political activist in Russia, he emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1923. He founded the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. He was a vocal opponent of Talcott Parsons' theories...
as well as others such as Kenneth Boulding
Kenneth E. Boulding
Kenneth Ewart Boulding was an economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher. He was cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science. He was...
, Anatol Rapaport and Adam Curle
Adam Curle
Adam Curle was a British academic and Quaker peace activist. His full name was Charles Thomas William Curle; he was known as "Adam" after the town where he was born, L'Isle-Adam, north of Paris.-Background:...
), of the scientific analysis of conflict; an interdisciplinary field of quantitative and mathematical social science dedicated to systematic investigation of the causes of war and conditions of peace. As he had done with weather, he analyzed war using mainly differential equations and probability theory. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealized system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be drawn regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations.
He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1950), he sought to statistically analyze the causes of war. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer."
In Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Richardson presented data on virtually every war from 1815 to 1945. As a result he hypothesized a base 10 logarithmic
Logarithmic
Logarithmic can refer to:* Logarithm, a transcendental function in mathematics* Logarithmic scale, the use of the logarithmic function to describe measurements* Logarithmic growth* Logarithmic distribution, a discrete probability distribution...
scale for conflicts. In other words, there are far more small fights, in which only a few people die, than large ones that kill many. While no conflict's size can be predicted beforehand—indeed, it is impossible to give an upper limit to the series—overall they do form a Poisson distribution
Poisson distribution
In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time and/or space if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since...
. On a smaller scale he showed the same pattern for gang murders in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
. Others have noted that similar statistical patterns occur frequently, whether planned (lotteries, with many more small payoffs than large wins), or by natural organization (there are more small towns with grocery stores than big cities with superstores).
Research on the length of coastlines and borders
While studying the causes of warWar
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
between two countries, Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. While collecting data, he realised that there was considerable variation in the various gazetted lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km
Kilometre
The kilometre is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one thousand metres and is therefore exactly equal to the distance travelled by light in free space in of a second...
while that between the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
as 380 or 449 km.
As part of his research, Richardson investigated how the measured length of a border changes as the unit of measurement is changed. He published empirical statistics which led to a conjectured relationship. This research was quoted by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child...
in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain?
How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension
"How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension" is a paper by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, first published in Science in 1967. In this paper Mandelbrot discusses self-similar curves that have Hausdorff dimension between 1 and 2...
Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat again:
At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is seen as one element in the birth of the modern study of fractal
Fractal
A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
s.
Patents for detection of icebergs
In April 1912, shortly after the loss of the Titanic, Richardson filed a patent for iceberg detection using acoustic echolocationEcholocation
Echolocation may refer to:* Acoustic location, the general use of sound to locate objects* Animal echolocation, non-human animals emitting sound waves and listening to the echo in order to locate objects or navigate...
in air. A month later he filed a similar patent for acoustic echolocation in water, foreseeing the invention of sonar
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...
by Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin was a prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the 6 February 1934 far right riots...
and Robert Boyle
Robert William Boyle
Robert William Boyle was a Newfoundlander physicist and one the of most important early pioneers in the development of sonar....
6 years later.
In popular culture
A fictional version of Richardson, called Wallace Ryman, plays a pivotal role in Giles FodenGiles Foden
Giles Foden is an English author best known for his award-winning novel The Last King of Scotland .-Biography:Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family moved to Malawi in 1971 where he was raised...
's novel Turbulence.
Richardson is mentioned in John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
's work, The Sheep Look Up
The Sheep Look Up
The Sheep Look Up is a science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, first published in 1972. The novel's setting is decidedly dystopian; the book deals with the deterioration of the environment in the United States...
where Statistics of Deadly Quarrels is used as an argument that wars are inevitable.
Lewis Fry Richardson Medal
Since 1997, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal is been awarded by the European Geosciences UnionEuropean Geosciences Union
The European Geosciences Union is an interdisciplinary non-profit learned society open to individuals who are professionally engaged in or associated with geosciences, planetary and space sciences, and related studies.The mission statement of the EGU is "Dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in...
for "exceptional contributions to nonlinear geophysics in general" (by EGS until 2003 and by EGU by 2004).
Winners have been:
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- 2011 Catherine Nicolis
- 2010 Klaus Fraedrich
- 2009 Stéphan Fauve
- 2008 Akiva YaglomAkiva YaglomAkiva Moiseevich Yaglom was a Soviet and Russian physicist, mathematician, statistician, and meteorologist. He was known for his contribution to the statistical theory of turbulence and theory of random processes. Yaglom spent most of his career in Russia working in various institutions, including...
- 2007 Ulrich Schumann
- 2006 Roberto Benzi
- 2005 Henk A.Dijkstra
- 2004 Michael Ghil
- 2003 Uriel Frisch
- 2002 F.H. Busse
- 2001 Julian Hunt
- 2000 Benoit MandelbrotBenoît MandelbrotBenoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child...
- 1999 Raymond HideRaymond HideRaymond Hide CBE FRS is a British physicist, who was formerly Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. Since 2000, he has been Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College, London.-Life:...
- 1998 Vladimir Keilis-BorokVladimir Keilis-BorokVladimir Keilis-Borok was born in Moscow, Russia on July 31, 1921. He is a mathematical geophysicist.- Biography :In 1948, he received a Ph.D. in mathematical geophysics from the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He was the founder, and is the Director Emeritus, of the International Institute of...
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See also
- WarWarWar is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
- War cyclesWar cyclesThe theory of war cycles holds that wars happen in cycles.-The cycles of war:The forerunner of the study of war cycles was Edward R Dewey, with Quincy Wright's monumental A Study of War adding impetus to the discipline...
- Arms raceArms raceThe term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
- Richardson extrapolationRichardson extrapolationIn numerical analysis, Richardson extrapolation is a sequence acceleration method, used to improve the rate of convergence of a sequence. It is named after Lewis Fry Richardson, who introduced the technique in the early 20th century. In the words of Birkhoff and Rota, ".....
- Richardson number
- Modified Richardson iterationModified Richardson iterationModified Richardson iteration is an iterative method for solving a system of linear equations. Richardson iteration was proposed by Lewis Richardson in his work dated 1910...
- Takebe KenkoTakebe Kenko, also known as Takebe Kenkō, was a Japanese mathematician in the Edo period.-Biography:Takebe was the favorite student of Seki Takakazu Takebe is considered to have extended and disseminated Seki's work....
- Frederick W. Lanchester