Sir George Stokes, Anglo-Irish physicist, mathematician, and politician (b. 1819)
Sir George Gabriel Stokes, 1st Baronet, (; 13 August 1819 – 1 February 1903) was an Irish English physicist and mathematician. Born in County Sligo, Ireland, Stokes spent all of his career at the University of Cambridge, where he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1849 until his death in 1903. As a physicist, Stokes made seminal contributions to fluid mechanics, including the Navier–Stokes equations and to physical optics, with notable works on polarization and fluorescence. As a mathematician, he popularised "Stokes' theorem" in vector calculus and contributed to the theory of asymptotic expansions. Stokes, along with Felix Hoppe-Seyler, first demonstrated the oxygen transport function of hemoglobin and showed color changes produced by aeration of hemoglobin solutions.
Stokes was made a baronet (hereditary knight) by the British monarch in 1889. In 1893 he received the Royal Society's Copley Medal, then the most prestigious scientific prize in the world, "for his researches and discoveries in physical science". He represented Cambridge University in the British House of Commons from 1887 to 1892, sitting as a Conservative. Stokes also served as president of the Royal Society from 1885 to 1890 and was briefly the Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
1903Feb, 1
Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet
Choose Another Date
Events on 1903
- 11Feb
Symphony No. 9 (Bruckner)
Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony receives its first performance in Vienna, Austria. - 23Feb
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base
Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity". - 1Oct
Boston Americans
Baseball: The Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series. - 13Oct
Pittsburgh Pirates
The Boston Red Sox win the first modern World Series, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the eighth game. - 17Dec
Wright Flyer
The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.