Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch is an Irish meteorologist, mathematician, blogger and book author. His interests include numerical weather prediction, dynamic meteorology, Hamiltonian mechanics, the history of meteorology, and the popularisation of mathematics.

Life and career Lynch was born in Dublin, and educated at University College Dublin, where he obtained his BSc (1968) and MSc (1969) in mathematical science. He enlisted in the Irish meteorological service (now known as Met Éireann) in 1971, and worked there until 2004, rising to the rank of Head of the Research and Training Division and later Deputy Director. In 1982, he was awarded a PhD by Trinity College Dublin for his thesis Planetary-scale Hydrodynamic Instability in the Atmosphere with Ray Bates as a primary supervisor and Larry Crane as a secondary supervisor. He became an honorary part-time lecturer in the School of Mathematics in Trinity College Dublin in 1990, a position he still holds in 2024.

In 2004, he moved to academia, becoming Met Éireann Professor of Meteorology at the School of Mathematical Sciences, University College Dublin. He has supervised several doctoral theses there. He is now an Emeritus Professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences.

Shortly after formally retiring from UCD in 2011, he started writing a weekly mathematical blog called "That's Maths", about half of the articles also appearing in The Irish Times newspaper. Three books of collected columns have resulted, in 2016, 2020, and 2022.

Scientific meteorology One of Lynch's principal interests is the scientific approach to weather forecasting and its history, Lewis Fry Richardson pioneered mathematical techniques of weather forecasting and dreamed that weather prediction would one day be an exact science. Modern computers were not available in Richardson's day and further theoretical advances were needed before Richardson's dream could be a realised. Lynch examined this issue first in a 2008 paper, and later in his book The Emergence of Numerical Weather Prediction: Richardson's Dream.

Awards In 2014 Lynch received the European Meteorological Society Silver Medal for "his outstanding contribution to meteorological education and outreach activities, his important scientific contribution to Numerical Weather forecasting and his leadership in international collaborations." In 2017 he received the Maths Week Ireland award for outstanding work in raising public awareness of mathematics.

In 2012, Peter Lynch was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

Publications Books 2022: That's Maths III : Elegant Abstractions & Eclectic Applications Logic Press, xii+260 pp. 2020: That’s Maths II (subtitled “A Ton of Wonders”) Logic Press,, 2016: That’s Maths (subtitled “The Mathematical Magic in Everyday Life”) Gill Books, 2010: Rambling Round Ireland: A Commodius Vicus of Recirculation The Liffey Press, 2006: The Emergence of Numerical Weather Prediction: Richardson's Dream, Cambridge University Press,

Papers 2016: 2015: "Numerical Weather Prediction", In Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics, Ed. N. J. Higham et al., Princeton Univ. Press. 2009: 2008: 2004: 1997: 1997: 1992: