Stokes, SIR GEORGE GABRIEL, mathematician and natural philosopher, was born August 13, 1819, in Skreen, County Sligo. He entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1837, graduated in 1841 as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, and in 1849 was appointed Lucasian professor of Mathematics. In 1852, the year after his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded the Rumford medal; in 1854 he became secretary, a position which he held till 1885, when he was made president for the succeeding quinquennial period. From 1886 he represented Cambridge in parliament, and in 1889 was created a baronet. His papers deal with some of the most abstruse problems of mathematical physics, and are characterised by a remarkable lucidity of treatment and an unerring sagacity of attack. In several of these he has, by opening new ground, given direction to later investigations by others. Two subjects have mainly engaged his attention. The one is Hydrodynamics, of which he wrote a valuable Report for the British Association in 1846, and in which his own contributions rank amongst the most important of the day. Specially may be noted his investigations on waves and on the effect of fluid friction on solids moving through fluids. Then to the theory of light he has made contributions of great value, his profound paper on the dynamical theory of diffraction (1849) being amongst the most important. He first gave a satisfactory theory of fluorescence and phosphorescence, and as early as 1852 he pointed out clearly the physical basis of Spectrum-analysis (q.v.). In 1884-86 he delivered in Aberdeen the Burnett Lectures on 'Light' (3 vols. 1887), an admirable elementary treatise for non-mathematical readers. His influence in the development of the Cambridge school of mathematical physics can hardly be overestimated. The leaders of the British school of natural philosophy all look to Stokes as their master and model.
See his reprint of Mathematical and Physical Papers (vol. i. 1880; vol. ii. 1883). He was Gifford Lecturer on Natural Theology at Edinburgh in 1891-92.