Ernest Oliver Tuck 1939–2009

Abstract

Ernie Tuck was one of Australia's most outstanding applied mathematicians, with an international reputation as a leading authority on water waves and ship hydrodynamics. He made seminal and incisive theoretical analyses in many areas, especially on wave resistance of slender ships and wave interaction with obstacles. His work is characterized by his ability to find the essentials of a complex problem, and then to apply apparently simple, but revealing analyses, using a combination of perturbation and asymptotic techniques with numerical calculations. He was an outstanding expositor, supervised twenty-five doctoral students, and will be remembered by his many colleagues as a brilliant scientist and an enthusiastic and caring person.