astronomy

Hilding Faxén

Hilding Faxén is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hilding Faxén rather than just read about it. In short: Olov Hilding Faxén (29 March 1892 – 1 June 1970) was a Swedish physicist who was primarily active within mechanics. Faxén received his doctorate in 1921 at Uppsala University with the thesis Einwirkung der Gefässwände auf den Widerstand gegen die Bewegung einer kleinen Kugel in einer zähen Flüssigkeit ("Influence of the container walls on the resistance against movement by a small ball in a viscous fluid").

Key takeaways

Hilding Faxén belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hilding Faxén to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hilding Faxén from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Olov Hilding Faxén (29 March 1892 – 1 June 1970) was a Swedish physicist who was primarily active within mechanics. Faxén received his doctorate in 1921 at Uppsala University with the thesis Einwirkung der Gefässwände auf den Widerstand gegen die Bewegung einer kleinen Kugel in einer zähen Flüssigkeit ("Influence of the container walls on the resistance against movement by a small ball in a viscous fluid"). One of his contributions was to formulate Faxén's law, which is a correction to Stokes' law for the friction on spherical objects in a viscous fluid, valid in the case when the object moves close to a wall of the container. This was a problem previously treated by Carl Wilhelm Oseen (1910) and Horace Lamb (1911), but incompletely solved. After the death of Ivar Fredholm, Faxén temporarily upheld the chair in mathematical physics at Stockholm University College, before Oskar Klein was made the new professor. Faxén then served as professor at Chalmers Institute of Technology, first in mathematics from 1930 and then in mechanics and mathematics 1934–1935. In 1935, Faxén was appointed professor of mechanics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where he remained until his retirement in 1958. Together with the Norwegian physicist Johan Holtsmark, Faxén published a work in 1927 about scattering of electrons in gases. Here they introduced a new, mathematical method based upon partial waves. This is now standard and described in almost every modern book on quantum mechanics. In 1948, Faxén was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hilding Faxén

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hilding Faxén claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hilding Faxén before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hilding Faxén ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hilding Faxén

In research: Hilding Faxén appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hilding Faxén in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hilding Faxén is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1892 births, 1970 deaths, Academic staff of Stockholm University, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hilding Faxén outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hilding Faxén in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hilding Faxén means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hilding Faxén out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hilding Faxén in simple terms?

Why does Hilding Faxén matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hilding Faxén?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hilding Faxén.