George Gabriel Stokes: Life, Science and Faith
Mark McCartney, Andrew Whitaker, and Alastair Wood
Abstract
George Gabriel Stokes was one of the most significant mathematicians and natural philosophers of the nineteenth century. Serving as Lucasian professor at Cambridge he made wide-ranging contributions to optics, fluid dynamics and mathematical analysis. As Secretary of the Royal Society he played a major role in the direction of British science acting as both a sounding board and a gatekeeper. Outside his own area he was a distinguished public servant and MP for Cambridge University. He was keenly interested in the relation between science and religion and wrote extensively on the matter. This e ... More
George Gabriel Stokes was one of the most significant mathematicians and natural philosophers of the nineteenth century. Serving as Lucasian professor at Cambridge he made wide-ranging contributions to optics, fluid dynamics and mathematical analysis. As Secretary of the Royal Society he played a major role in the direction of British science acting as both a sounding board and a gatekeeper. Outside his own area he was a distinguished public servant and MP for Cambridge University. He was keenly interested in the relation between science and religion and wrote extensively on the matter. This edited collection of essays brings together experts in mathematics, physics and the history of science to cover the many facets of Stokes’s life in a scholarly but accessible way.
Keywords:
fluid dynamics,
optics,
Royal Society,
nineteenth century,
Cambridge,
Lucasian professor,
science and religion,
natural philosophy,
mathematics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198822868 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198822868.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Mark McCartney, editor
Senior lecturer in mathematics, Ulster University
Andrew Whitaker, editor
Visiting Professor, Queen's University Belfast
Alastair Wood, editor
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Dublin City University
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