Ferraro, Vincenzo Consolato Antonino

Born London, England, 10 April 1902

Died probably London, England, 3 January 1974

British mathematical physicist Vincenzo Ferraro was one of the pioneers in the study of ionized gases in the presence of a dynamically important magnetic field, now called magnetohydrodynamics [MHD]. He was educated at Imperial College, University of London, where he took his Ph. D. under the supervision of Sydney Chapman , then the chief professor of mathematics at Imperial College. They developed the Chapman-Ferraro theory of geomagnetic storms (1930). Chapman and Ferraro assumed that discrete plasma streams were emitted from solar flares. Assuming that such a stream behaves like a perfectly conducting fluid, they suggested that the stream pushes the geomagnetic field before it and is itself retarded, so that a temporary magnetospheric cavity is produced in the front of the stream. Later, the theory had to be modified when the solar wind was discovered. However, treating the stream as a fluid and not as...