Ralph Alger Bagnold was a British scientist and desert explorer born April 3, 1896, in Plymouth, Devon, England, who died May 28, 1990, at Hither Green, London, and who served in the British Army Royal Engineers and Royal Corps of Signals before working in the Department of Civil Engineering at Imperial College London. He pioneered the study of wind driven sand transport and dune formation, founding aeolian geomorphology as a discipline through field observation, experiment, and physical equations, producing the dimensionless Bagnold number and the Bagnold formula for characterizing sand flow, and also researched singing sands and particle suspension in fluids; NASA later named the Bagnold Dunes on Mars in his honor. During the Second World War he founded and commanded the Long Range Desert Group from 1940 to 1941. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1944, made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1941, and received the G. K. Warren Prize in 1969, the Penrose Medal in 1970, and the Wollaston Medal in 1971.
Facts
Notable WorkThe Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes 1 In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Ralph Alger Bagnold
Death section, date
He died at Hither Green on 28 May 1990 at the age of 94.
Death section, year
He died at Hither Green on 28 May 1990 at the age of 94.
Death section, place
He died at Hither Green on 28 May 1990 at the age of 94.
Main article text, nationality
English 20th-century desert explorer, geologist, and soldier.
Main article text, field
His work in the field of Aeolian processes was the basis for the book The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes
Main article text, notable work
His work in the field of Aeolian processes was the basis for the book The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes
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