Michael S. Longuet-Higgins

Michael Selwyn Longuet-Higgins FRS (8 December 1925 – 26 February 2016) was a British mathematician and oceanographer at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Cambridge University, England and Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego, USA. He was the younger brother of H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins.

Longuet-Higgins introduced the theory of the origin of microseisms and is the inventor of "rhombo blocks", a mathematical toy consisting of blocks whose faces are rhombuses.

Educated at The Pilgrims' School, Winchester and Winchester College from 1937 to 1941 with Freeman Dyson, his brother Christopher and James Lighthill from 1937 to 1943, he won a mathematics scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge at the age of 17, where he graduated with a BA in mathematics in 1945 after only two years. He was awarded a doctorate in geophysics in 1951. From 1969 to 1989 he was a Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

His research areas included both pure mathematics (projective geometry, polytopes, random functions and surfaces) and applied mathematics (fluid dynamics, microseisms, the generation of ocean waves by wind, the dynamics of liquid bubbles, sonoluminescence, wave breaking, steep waves, and heat and gas exchange at the ocean surface). Provided by Wikipedia