Turbulent Fellow

When chubby little Norbert Wiener was 14, he graduated from Tufts College. Reporters hailed him, and parents of ordinary children predicted that he would be a flash in the pan. When Norbert was 18, he emerged from Harvard with a Ph.D. and an academic halo which grew brighter as he studied at Goettingen, Cambridge, Columbia. Today Norbert Wiener, at the age of 43, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ranks as one of the topflight mathematicians in the U. S. A familiar figure on the Tech campus, with his up-tilted head and rolling gait, Professor Wiener is as famous for his ebullience and absentmindedness as he is for his erudition in mathematics, philosophy, theoretical physics, politics and linguistics. Students have heard him cry when making an intellectual coup: "Hot stuff, boys! Hot stuff!"

Professor Wiener belongs to the school of mathematicians who insist that the most abstract of studies be grounded in reality. His chief practical interest is the study of aeronautics, and last week at the semicentennial meeting of the American Mathematical Society he said: "It is a falsification of the history of mathematics to represent pure mathematics as a self-contained science drawing inspiration from itself alone and morally taking in its own washing." He then plunged eagerly into a discussion of his favorite field, harmonic analysis.

Harmonic analysis is that branch of mathematics concerned with the study of fluctuating or oscillating motions. Ever since the 18th Century mathematicians have occupied themselves with the hypothetical case of an infinite piece of string. In how many ways could such a string vibrate? Today the problem has taken a more practical turn. Mathematicians want to separate complex waves and oscillations into simpler movements. Chief use for harmonic analysis is study of the problems presented by the whirls and eddies of air around airplane wings. For example, harmonic analysis makes it possible to measure the varying speed at different points in a wind tunnel, to plot these speeds on a graph and reduce complicated wind motions to a series of simple, understandable oscillations. Thus mathematicians hope to predict how the shape of an airplane wing will affect the motion of the wind. Next practical step would be designing of a wing for more speed, safety, lift. Application of the "ergodic" theorem has proved very useful, said Dr. Wiener, rushing into a mass of detail so abstruse that not all his colleagues could understand him. Many unsolved problems on turbulent motion still remain, but Wiener's enthusiasm for harmonic analysis was so intense last week that California Tech's famed Eric Temple Bell was moved to cry: "Who will rid me of this turbulent fellow!"

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