Prof. George Francis FitzGerald

Wikipedia Biographical Summary:

"...George Francis FitzGerald (3 August 1851 – 22 February 1901) was an Irish professor of "natural and experimental philosophy" (i.e., physics) at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, during the last quarter of the 19th century. He is known for his work in electromagnetic theory and for the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction, which became an integral part of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. The FitzGerald crater on the far side of the Moon is named for him.

Life and work in physics

FitzGerald was born at No. 19, Lower Mount Street in Dublin on 3 August 1851 to the Reverend William FitzGerald and his wife Anne Frances Stoney (sister of George Johnstone Stoney and Bindon Blood Stoney).[1] Professor of Moral Philosophy in Trinity and vicar of St Anne's, Dawson Street, at the time of his son's birth, William FitzGerald was consecrated Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross in 1857 and translated to Killaloe and Clonfert in 1862. George returned to Dublin and entered Trinity as a student at the age of 16. He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1877 and spent the rest of his career at this college.

Along with Oliver Lodge, Oliver Heaviside and Heinrich Hertz, FitzGerald was a leading figure among the group of "Maxwellians" who revised, extended, clarified, and confirmed James Clerk Maxwell's mathematical theories of the electromagnetic field during the late 1870s and the 1880s.

In 1883, following from Maxwell's equations, FitzGerald was the first to suggest a device for producing rapidly oscillating electric currents to generate electromagnetic waves, a phenomenon which was first shown to exist experimentally by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1888.[2]

In 1883, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1899, was awarded a Royal Medal for his investigations in theoretical physics. In 1900, he was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

FitzGerald suffered from many digestive problems for much of his shortened life. He became very ill with stomach problems. He died at his home in Dublin shortly after an operation on a perforated ulcer on 21 February 1901..."

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_FitzGerald

• Biographical index of former fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783-2002, pt. 1. A-J, page 316

Wife and descendants in 'Some newer annals of the Stoney family'.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Francis_FitzGerald