In 1834, Scottish naval engineer John Scott Russell observed a boat being pulled rapidly along a thin channel by a pair of horses. When the boat suddenly stopped, Russell noticed that the bow wave continued forward and moved down the channel "apparently without change of form or diminution of speed," according to his writings.
Over 50 years later, Russell's observation led the Dutch mathematicians Diederik Johannes Korteweg and Gustav de Vries to formulate a nonlinear equation describing Russell's wave. Russell's solitary wave, or "soliton" and its relatives have found numerous applications in nonlinear optics, plasma physics and signal processing.
Mathematics professor Peter Perry will trace the trajectory of Russell's solitary wave through pure and applied mathematics from its discovery nearly two