STOKES, SIR George Gabriel, British mathematician and physicist: b. Skreen, County Sligo, Ireland, 13 Aug. 1819; d. 1903. He was graduated at Cambridge in 1841, in the same year was elected a Fellow of Pembroke Col lege and was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge in 1849. In 1885 he became president of the Royal Society and from 1887 to 1892 was member of Parliament for Cambridge University. He was made a baronet in 1889 and in 1902 became master of Pem broke College. He was distinguished as an ex pounder of the principles of hydrodynamics and of the phenomena of fluorescence and phos phorescence and he was the first to demonstrate in college and public lectures the scientific prin ciples of spectrum analysis. He greatly ex tended the field of physical inquiry and demon strated more clearly than had ever before been done the relation of physics and the natural sciences in general to higher mathematics. He
was also a high authority on optics. His work, especially in mathematical physics, was brilliant and exact. He attempted successfully the solu tion of problems thought by leading scientists to be practically unsolvable. His publications include the 'Burnet Lectures on Light' (1892) • 'Mathematical and Physical Papers' (1880 1902) ;