Joseph Proudman, CBE, FRS was a distinguished British mathematician and oceanographer of international repute. His theoretical studies into the oceanic tides not only "solved practically all the remaining tidal problems which are soluble within the framework of classical hydrodynamics and analytical mathematics" but laid the basis of a tidal prediction service of great international importance. Proudman was born at Unsworth, near Bury, Lancashire on 30 December 1888. He attended primary schools at Unsworth and Bold and from 1902 to 1907 he was a pupil-teacher at Farnworth primary school.