THE EARLY HISTORY OF SOLITONS (SOLITARY WAVES)

The early history of solitons or solitary waves began in August 1834 w hen the Victorian Engineer John Scott Russell observed a solitary wave travelling along a Scottish canal The definitive theory was not publi shed until 1895 by Korteweg and de Vries, working in Amsterdam. The su bject was reborn in Plasma Physics in 1958 with the discovery, by J. H . Adlam and the author, of solitary waves in a collisionless plasma co ntaining a magnetic field. In 1965 Zabusky and Kruskal found by numeri cal investigation, that such waves retain their identity after collidi ng. This particle-like behaviour led these authors to introduce the te rm soliton to replace the term solitary wave.