James Hopwood Jeans

Sir James Hopwood Jeans was an English physicist, mathematician and astronomer, born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, on 11 September 1877, the son of a parliamentary correspondent and author. He was educated at Merchant Taylors School, Wilsons Grammar School in Camberwell and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow of Trinity in October 1901. He went to Princeton University in 1904 as a professor of applied mathematics, and from 1923 to 1944 he was associated with the Mount Wilson Observatory. He served as a secretary of the Royal Society from 1919 to 1929, was the president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1925 to 1927 and won its Gold Medal, and in 1933 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Through Space and Time.