Photo ©Royal Astronomical Society, courtesy Peter Hingley
Edward Arthur Milne
14 February 1896	1945 Bruce Medalist	21 September 1950

Arthur Milne was born in Hull, England. His university education consisted of but a year and a half at Cambridge University, which he left to engage in important research on the physics of antiaircraft guns during World War I. Afterward he spent five years at Cambridge and three at the University of Manchester before becoming Rouse Ball professor of mathematics at Oxford University, where he and H.H. Plaskett founded a major school of astrophysics. His research on radiative equilibrium and the theory of stellar atmospheres, much of it with Ralph H. Fowler, led to the determination of the temperatures and pressures associated with spectral classes, the theory of limb darkening, and improved understanding of line profiles in stellar spectra. Milne also showed how molecules escape from stellar and planetary atmospheres. His later work on stellar structure and cosmological models in disagreement with general relativity was not as successful, but it stimulated important work by others.

Presentation of Bruce medal
Sanford, Roscoe F., PASP 57, 65-68 (1945).

Other awards
Royal Astronomical Society, Gold medal, 1935, presented by F.J.M. Stratton, MNRAS 95, 421-28 (1935).
Royal Society, Royal Medal, 1941.

Some offices held
Royal Astronomical Society, President, 1943-45.

Biographical materials
Biography.ms
Smith, Meg Weston [Milne's daughter], A Scholarship Boy, Sugar, and a Round Square : E.A. Milne's Headstart in Hull (Highgate, Beverley, 1998)
University of St. Andrews, The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Whitrow, G.J., Dictionary of Scientific Biography 9, 414-16.

Obituaries
McCrea, W.H. & H.H. Plaskett, MNRAS 111, 160 (1951).
McCrea, W.H., Obituary Notices of the Royal Society of London 7, 421-43 (1950-51).
McCrea, W.H., Observatory 70, 225 (1950).
More obituaries

Named after him
Lunar crater Milne
Minor Planet #11767 Milne

More references