Longuet-Higgins introduced the theory of the origin of microseisms[6] and is the inventor of "rhombo blocks", a mathematical toy consisting of blocks whose faces are rhombuses.[7]
Michael was born in Lenham, Kent in England to Henry Hugh Longuet Longuet-Higgins and Albinia Cecil Bazeley. He had an elder sister Patricia (Pat) and an elder brother Hugh Christopher (Christopher). He was educated at The Pilgrims' School, Winchester and at Winchester College, together with Freeman Dyson, his brother Christopher, and James Lighthill from 1937 to 1943. In 1943, at the age of 17, he won a scholarship in mathematics to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he qualified after just two years for a BA in mathematics in 1945. He was awarded a PhD in geophysics in 1951.[8]
Towards the end of the World War II (December 1943) he started working for the Admiralty Research Laboratory (ARL) in Teddington. He joined Group W (waves) set up on 5 June 1944 under George Deacon. Here he helped predict wave and current conditions in preparation for the Pacific landings. He worked not only on the theory of wind waves but also on the geomagnetic induction of voltages by tidal streams, and on the generation of oceanic microseisms.
In 1948 he returned to Cambridge, to read for a PhD but without a break in his research, just reporting to Sir Harold Jeffreys and later to Robert Stoneley at the end of each term. After being awarded his PhD in geophysics ("just a one hour interview which he almost forgot to attend") in 1951 at Cambridge, he was awarded a 4-year research fellowship (Title A) at Trinity College. The first year (1951–52) he spent in the US as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow, first at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and then at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, with Walter Munk. On his return to England in 1952, he spent two years of his research fellowship in Cambridge. Together with H. S. M. Coxeter and J. C. P. Miller he was first to publish the full list of uniform polyhedra (1954).
He was invited to join the National Institute of Oceanography in Wormley, Surrey, in 1954 (renamed Institute of Oceanographic Science in 1973) then led by George Deacon, studying ocean waves and storm surges. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1963.[9] During this period "of thirteen happy and fruitful years" he had several visiting research appointments, including the Mathematics Department at MIT (1957–58), the University of Adelaide, Australia (1964) and the University of California, San Diego (1961-2 and 1966-7). Between 1967 and 1969 he was Professor of Applied Mathematics and Oceanography at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.
Michael Longuet-Higgins received many honours and was awarded several prizes including:
Cambridge University's Rayleigh Prize for Mathematics (1950)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1963)
Honorary doctorate of the Technical University of Copenhagen (1979)
Honorary doctorate of the University of Glasgow (1979)
Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1979)
Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (1981)
Sverdrup Gold Medal of the American Meteorological Society (1983)
International Coastal Engineering Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers (1984)
Oceanography Award of the Society for Underwater Technology (1990)
Honorary Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (2002)
Personal
Michael Longuet-Higgins was married to Joan Redmayne Tattersall on 12. December 1958. Together they had four children, Ruth, Mark, John and Anne all of whom were born in Guildford, England. The children were brought up during the first years in Godalming, England; Del Mar, Torry Pines and La Jolla, California; Corvallis, Oregon; Cambridge and Comberton in England.
Longuet-Higgins, M. S. (2013). Sajjadi, S. G. (ed.). Dynamics of Water Waves – Selected Papers of Michael Longuet-Higgins. Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering. Vol. 35. World Scientific. 3 Volumes, 2372 pp. ISBN978-981-4322-51-5.
