Description

Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge and President of the Royal Society, Sir George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1904) made substantial contributions to the fields of fluid dynamics, optics, physics, and geodesy, in which numerous discoveries still bear his name. The Memoir and Scientific Correspondence of the Late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Bart., edited by Joseph Larmor, offers rare insight into this capacious scientific mind, with letters attesting to the careful, engaged experimentation that earned him international acclaim. Volume 2 (1907) includes important professional correspondence with James Clerk Maxwell, James Prescott Joule, and many others, with particular attention given to Stokes' activities with the British Meteorological Society. Many of his foundational innovations in optics are also explicated in these letters, serving in place of the authoritative volume he unfortunately never had the opportunity to complete.