Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
Taylor, Geoffrey Ingram (1886-1975) was a British physicist whose work contributed to the sciences of meteorology and aeronautics. He also worked on the development of the atomic bomb during World War II (1939–1945).
Taylor was born in London, in 1886. He attended University College School, and enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1905. He passed his final examinations in mathematics and physics with honors in 1908, and was awarded a research scholarship at Trinity. He was elected to a fellowship there in 1910, and remained at Trinity for the rest of his life.
Taylor's early research included a theoretical study of shock waves. He also investigated the mixing processes in the lower layers of the atmosphere due to turbulent fluctuations of wind velocity. He published his ideas and work on atmospheric turbulence in Turbulent Motion in Fluids, which won the Adams Prize at Cambridge in 1915.
During World War I (1914–1918), Taylor worked for the Royal Flying Corps at Farnborough researching and helping to design aircraft. His study of stress distribution in cylindrical shafts under torsion helped lead to the development of stronger propeller shafts. After the war he returned to Cambridge and continued his studies on turbulence, including how it relates to oceanography, and on passage of bodies through a rotating fluid. In the late 1920's and early 1930's, Taylor's association with the work done by B.M. Jones in the wind tunnels at Cambridge's Aeronautical Laboratory and his interest in the work of American mathematician Norbert Wiener on chaotic motion resulted in his famous papers on the statistical theory of turbulence.
During World War II (1939–1945) Taylor was selected as a member of the British mission that worked in the United States on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. He was present at the first nuclear test explosion in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Taylor was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1919 and was awarded its Royal Medal (1933) and its Copley Medal (1944). He was knighted in 1944 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1969.