The Waves of Professor Love

To the Editors:

The footnote on p. 27 of Jim Holt’s review of Edward Frenkel’s Love and Math [NYR, December 5, 2013] makes it sound a bit as if Professor Love were a pseudonym or mild witticism. A.E.H. Love was an expert on various kinds of wave motion, and Love waves are named for him. They are surface waves, which, in the case of earthquakes, travel more slowly than p (primary or pressure) and s (secondary or shear) waves and so arrive later, but sometimes do the most damage.

Virginia Trimble
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
University of California
Irvine, California

Jim Holt replies:

Facetiousness is silenced by Love waves.