George Gabriel Stokes Life, Science and Faith

by McCartney, Mark; Whitaker, Andrew; Wood, Alastair

• ISBN13: 9780198822868
• ISBN10: 0198822863
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2019-08-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Mark McCartney, Senior lecturer in mathematics, Ulster University,Andrew Whitaker, Visiting Professor, Queen's University Belfast,Alastair Wood, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, Dublin City University

Mark McCartney studied mathematics and physics at The Queen's University, Belfast, graduating with a PhD in 1993. He is currently employed as senior lecturer in mathematics at Ulster University His research in applied mathematics is centred around nonlinear dynamics, while his work in the history of mathematics and natural philosophy focuses on the nineteenth century. He is President (2018-2020) of the British Society for the History of Mathematics.


Andrew Whitaker did his first degree at Oxford University, and his doctorate at the University of Nottingham, where he worked on nuclear magnetic resonance with Peter Mansfield, later Sir Peter and a Nobel Laureate in Medicine for his part in the invention of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). He lectured in Northern Ireland from 1970, initially in the University of Ulster, and from 1989 at Queen's University of Belfast, where he became Professor in 2002. In later years most of his research has been in the foundations of quantum theory, especially the work of John Bell, and more recently he has become involved in historical aspects of physics, in particular quantum physics.


Alastair Wood is a graduate of St.Andrews University and held Lectureships in the Universities of Manchester and Cranfield prior to becoming Wescan Professor of Applied Mathematics in Dublin City University, serving 9 years as Dean of Faculty. His main research areas of Asymptotic Analvsis and Differential Equations, where Stokes made major contributions, led him to a deeper appreciation of the man and his works. He was a plenary speaker at the 2003 Commemorations of the centenary of Stokes's death held in the Isaac Newton Institute and the Royal Irish Academy. With Michael Berry he organised the 1998 to 2004 Summer Schools at Stokes's birthplace in Co.Sligo.

Table of Contents

1. Introductory biography, Alistair Wood
2. The Stokes family in Ireland and Cambridge, Michael Sandford
3. "Stokes of Pembroke S.W. & a very good one" - The Mathematical Education of George Gabriel Stokes, June Barrow-Green
4. Stokes's optics I : Waves in lumeniferous ether, Oliver Darrigol
5. Stokes's optics II : Other phenomena in light, Oliver Darrigol
6. Stokes's fundamental contributions to fluid dynamics., Peter Lynch
7. Stokes's Mathematical work, Richard Paris
8. George Gabriel Stokes and the Royal Society, Sloan Evans Despeaux
9. Stokes and engineering: The analysis of the structure of railway bridges and their collapse, Andrew Whitaker
10. Faith and thought: Stokes as a religious man of science, Stuart Mathieson
11. The Scientific legacy of George Gabriel Stokes, Andrew Fowler