Love, Augustus Edward Hough

Augustus Edward Hough Love, (born April 17, 1863, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England—died June 5, 1940, Oxford), British geophysicist and mathematician who discovered a major type of seismic wave that was subsequently named for him.

Love held the Sedleian professorship of natural philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1899 to 1940. In his analysis of earthquake waves, Love made the assumption that the Earth consists of concentric layers that differ in density and postulated the occurrence of a seismic wave confined to the surface layer, or crust, of the Earth. This wave would be propagated as a result of the difference in density between the crust and underlying mantle. His prediction was confirmed by recordings of the behaviour of waves in the surface layer of the Earth. He proposed a method—based on measurements of Love waves—to measure the thickness of the Earth’s crust. In addition to his work on geophysical theory, Love studied elasticity and wrote A Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity, 2 vol. (1892–93).