(Ludwig) Edward Fraenkel was born in Kiel, Germany, in 1927. In 1934 he moved with his family to the UK from where he was evacuated to Toronto, Canada, during the Second World War. He completed his degree in Applied Science at the University of Toronto in 1947 and was awarded an MSc in Aeronautical Engineering the following year. Fraenkel held positions at several UK academic institutions from the 1950s, also holding sabbatical posts in the USA. He was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Bath from 1988 until his retirement in 2005.

Fraenkel was a leading authority in the field of hydrodynamics and was best known for his work on a resolution of the Stokes conjecture for the wave of greatest height first proposed in 1880. He received the Senior Whitehead Prize in 1989 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993.

The collection contains an extensive range of material documenting Fraenkel’s research and teaching activities at Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and the University of Sussex, as well as the University of Bath. It comprises notes, lectures, correspondence, drafts and publications, papers relating to visits and conferences, and biographical material.

Size: 65 boxes, 1142 items.

A catalogue providing full details of the contents of the Edward Fraenkel Collection is available in PDF format.