Andrew Fowler: Mathematical Geoscience

The word model is one of the most used and often abused in the geosciences. It has taken several different meanings: when physicists talk about the Bohr–Sommerfeld or the standard models, they refer to fundamental explanations. When geoscientists refer to a model, they sometimes refer to a collection of data (gravity model xyz of the Earth’s gravity field, for instance, or seismic tomography model abc of the Earth’s mantle). A numerical model is really a set of numerical experiments. Mathematical modeling is a different thing, it is the formulation and solution of (geo)physical problems in mathematical terms usually with analytical solutions. It extracts the essence of a physical problem and reduces it to a tractable mathematical problem. Mathematical modeling requires technical skills, but, first and foremost, it is an art: it demands at least as much physical intuition as mathematical technique. Andrew Fowler, the author of Mathematical Geoscience, has been teaching applied mathematics for geoscientists at the University of Oxford. He has devoted most of his research career to mathematical modeling of different problems in the geosciences. He has a long and diverse experience in the field, and, most importantly, he is a great artist! Mathematical Geoscience covers many different topics related to the earth, oceans, and atmosphere, but one can see that they all belong to the very wide field of geophysical fluid dynamics. They include climate, atmospheric physics, oceanography, geomorphology, glaciology, petrology and volcanology and mantle convection. Geophysical fluid dynamics belongs to a British tradition in applied mathematics; a tradition based on the works of John Scott Russell, Lord Rayleigh, Sir Horace Lamb, Sir Harold Jeffreys, G.I. Taylor, Batchelor, and many others. One of the characteristics of the British school of applied mathematics is its empirical approach; these mathematicians can even devise experiments to refine their mathematical models.