| D. Howell Peregrine | |
| Birth Date: | 30 December 1938 |
| Death Place: | Bristol |
| Field: | Fluid mechanics Coastal engineering |
| Work Institution: | University of Bristol |
| Alma Mater: | Oxford University Cambridge University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | T. Brooke Benjamin FRS |
Howell Peregrine (30 December 1938 – 20 March 2007) was a British applied mathematician noted for his contributions to fluid mechanics, especially of free surface flows such as water waves, and coastal engineering.[1] [2] [3]
Howell Peregrine joined the Mathematics Department of University of Bristol in 1964 following his undergraduate and postgraduate training at Oxford and Cambridge.[4] He spent his entire career at Bristol. One of his most remarkable contributions was the theoretical prediction of a new nonlinear entity, now called the Peregrine soliton,[5] that may explain the formation of hydrodynamics rogue waves and that has also been experimentally demonstrated more than 25 years later in the field of nonlinear fiber optics [6] [7] and then in 2011 in hydrodynamics with experiments in a water wave tank.[8]
He was an associate editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics for more than 25 years.
Howell Peregrine died suddenly after a short battle against cancer. He was at the time a professor emeritus of applied mathematics at the University of Bristol.
Peregrine was known to be a good photographer of natural phenomena. Some of the photographs which he took himself appeared in his papers.[2]