Douglas Rayner Hartree

The following sections are included:

• Preface

• Acknowledgments

• Douglas Rayner Hartree (1897 - 1958)

• Chronology of events

• Hartree family tree

• Contents

Douglas Rayner Hartree was born in Cambridge, England on March 27, 1897, to William and Eva Hartree. He was their first-born and was given his mother's maiden name as middle name. They were a middle class family, comfortably off with a largish house and a complement of domestics…

The following sections are included:

• World War I and its aftermath

• Reunions at Bedales and marriage

• Notes and References

The following sections are included:

• Passing through Leiden

• Robert Bruce Lindsay and his concept of self-consistency

• Notes and references

The following sections are included:

• Collaborating on X-ray reflection

• Lindsay and his self-consistency ideas

• Notes and references

The following sections are included:

• William Hartree and calculations with exchange

• The effects of configuration interaction

• Relativistic theory

• Notes and references

In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi was the first to successfully transmit and receive radio signals and, by the end of 1901, the first to send a signal across the Atlantic from a transmitting station in Cornwall, England to Newfoundland, Canada, a distance of 2100 miles. He did so to prove that wireless waves were not affected by the earth's curvature. Soon wireless telegraphy developed into a means of communication…

The following sections are included:

• Research

• Life in Manchester

• Musical and social life

• Robert Bruce Lindsay, a visitor from America

• Notes and References

The following sections are included:

• The Manchester differential analyzer

• Early Applications

• Differential analyzers in computing centers

• Notes and References

The following sections are included:

• Other interactions with Industry

• Notes and References

Hartree was always willing to tackle problems suggested to him where he thought he could make a contribution. One such area was fluid dynamics.

In 1929, when Hartree took on the Professorship in Applied Mathematics, Sydney Goldstein (1903 - 1989) [1], an applied mathematician and a great exponent of aerodynamics, accepted a Lectureship in Mathematics at Manchester along with a Research Fellowship at Cambridge. In 1931 he obtained a regular position at Cambridge, but the two years at Manchester were very influential in his later career in fluid dynamics. During these two years, Hartree was stimulated by Goldstein and vice versa. We have already seen in Chapter 6 that Hartree argued for β = 1/3 in radio-wave propagation whereas Goldstein defended β = 0…

With war being inevitable, Hartree wrote to Slater on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. His primary concern was the work of his father over the last several years, work that Hartree had not had time to publish. Quite a bit had been done since the last publication, which Hartree now deemed certain he would not have the opportunity to write up. So he thought it would be a good thing if someone outside the country (preferably outside of Europe) had a complete copy, and suggested Slater to his father. He left it to Slater's discretion what should be done with the wave functions and other data…

The following sections are included:

• Servo Panel

• The differential analyzer job shop

• Magnetron research group

• Notes and References

The following sections are included:

• Spreading the news

• Notes and References

In 1929, the John Humphrey Plummer Foundation was established at Cambridge University to manage the funds left under the will of the late Mr Plummer "on perpetuity for the promotion of education in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physical Science or other allied subjects in the University of Cambrige … and endow … Professorships each of an annual value of £1,200." Mr Plummer, who died on December 26,1928, had lived in Southport, Lancashire for fifty years where he had established a very successful real estate business. Upon his death, many of his assets were tied to leased property with long leases remaining. Thus his estate had the ability to earn income over the years estimated at £10,000 per annum. There is no record that Mr Plummer had any association with Cambridge University nor any special interest in science. His bequest seems to have arisen from a genuine desire to use his wealth in the best possible manner for the benefit of mankind, though the timing of the will, written in 1921, suggests that the death of his youngest son in World War I may have been a factor. His wife predeceased him and only his elder son – a church organist in Derby – survived him [1]…

In the United States, it had been recognized that large-scale automatic digital machines would make more demands on individuals than vice versa. In other words, skill in the analysis, formulation, and programming of problems would become the controlling factor in the proper use of these machines. To attack this problem, the Institute of Numerical Analysis of the National Bureau of Standards was established early in 1948 on the campus of the University of California in Los Angeles. Hartree served as Acting Director for three months during the summer of that year…

The following sections are included:

• Teaching and the curriculum

• Notes and References

Hartree had many acquaintances in Australia. One was David Milton Myers (1911-1999), who had collaborated with Hartree and Porter on the use of the differential analyzer for the study of space-charge distribution in a triode (see Chapter 8). Hartree's enthusiasm for mechanical devices must have been contagious. Returning to Sydney, Australia, Myers joined the Radio Research Board of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as a research officer, having obtained a D Eng Sc (1936) for work including Some mechanical aids to calculation [1]. There he took up the design of an integraph for the solution of differential equations of the second order [2] which, unlike the differential analyzer that relied on shaft rotations, was designed around linear displacements. In 1939 he became Chief of CSIR's Division of Electrotechnology (ET). During WW II, he was involved in the development of accurate prediction methods for coastal defense gunnery and for the protection of shipping from magnetic mines. The technique consisted of de-Gaussing and was enormously successful…

At the University of Cambridge, Hartree supervised a number of students in atomic structure work. The first two performed hand calculations needed for studies of the solar corona and planetary nebulae, respectively. M Tuberg Gold spent 1948-49 at Girton College where she was supervised jointly by Bertha Swirles Jeffreys and Hartree. She computed radial functions, without exchange, for the 3s²3p and 3s3p² configurations for Fe⁺¹³. Roy H Garstang, Hartree's PhD student during 1949-1953, was the last to perform hand calculations, but including exchange. The ion he considered was Ne⁺²…

In the Fall of 1956, I returned to Canada, David Mayers left for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and no new students arrived on the scene. I was trying to complete my dissertation within a year. The Cambridge degree requirements included only two years in residence, after which arrangements could be made for completion of the degree at another institution. In my case, Dr W H Watson, then chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Toronto, was appointed as my supervisor. Before my departure from Cambridge, Hartree mentioned that a dissertation should not only include computational results, but also some theory. Here he proposed some "Z-dependent" theory, as it is now called, where Z is the nuclear charge. About half the resulting dissertation consisted of tables of numbers…

The following sections are included:

• Bertha Swirles Jeffreys

• Arthur Porter

• Jack Howlett

• John Crank

• Nicholas Eyres

• Sir Aaron Klug

• Roy H Garstang

• Donald C F Leigh

• David F Mayers

• Ronald J Lomax

• A personal tribute from the author

• Notes and References

The following sections are included:

• Hartree's publications

• Index