George Stoney | |
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| Born | (1826-02-15)15 February 1826 |
| Died | 5 July 1911(1911-07-05) (aged 85) Notting Hill,London, UKGBI |
| Resting place | St. Nahi's Church,Dublin, Ireland |
| Alma mater | Trinity College Dublin (BA) |
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| Spouse | Margaret Sophia Stoney |
| Children | 5, includingEdith andFlorence |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
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George Johnstone Stoney (15 February 1826 – 5 July 1911) was an Irishphysicist and academic who is best known for introducing the termelectron as the "fundamental unitquantity of electricity";[1] he initially named itelectrolion in 1881,[2] and later named itelectron in 1891.[3][4][5] He published around 75 scientific papers during his lifetime, and was the professor of Physics atQueen's College Galway from 1852 to 1857.
George Johnstone Stoney was born on 15 February 1826 at Oakley Park inClareen, Ireland, the son of George Stoney (1792–) and Anne Bindon Blood (1801–1883). The Stoney family is an old-establishedAnglo-Irish family.[6]
Stoney attendedTrinity College Dublin, graduating with aB.A. in 1848. From 1848 to 1852, he worked as an astronomy assistant toWilliam Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, atBirr Castle, where Parsons had built the world's largest telescope, the 72-inchLeviathan of Parsonstown.
From 1852 to 1857, Stoney was Professor of Physics atQueen's College Galway. From 1857 to 1882, he was Secretary of theQueen's University of Ireland, an administrative job based inDublin. He continued his independent scientific research throughout his decades of non-scientific employment duties in Dublin. In 1882, he moved to the post of Superintendent of Civil Service Examinations in Ireland, a post he held until his retirement in 1893.
Stoney took up residence inLondon, England. He died at his home inNotting Hill on 5 July 1911 at the age of 85. His cremated ashes were brought back to Ireland to be buried atSt. Nahi's Church in Dublin.[1]
Stoney also served for decades as Honorary Secretary and then Vice President of theRoyal Dublin Society, and after his move to London he served on the council of theRoyal Society. Additionally, he intermittently served on scientific review committees of theBritish Association for the Advancement of Science from the early 1860s on.
Stoney published seventy-five scientific papers in a variety of journals, but chiefly in the journals of the Royal Dublin Society. He made significant contributions to cosmic physics and to the theory of gases. He estimated the number ofmolecules in a cubic millimetre of gas, at room temperature and pressure, from data obtained from the kinetic theory of gases. Stoney's most important scientific work was the conception and calculation of the magnitude of the "atom of electricity". In 1891, he proposed the term "electron" to describe the fundamental unit ofelectric charge,[7] and his contributions to research in this area laid the foundations for the eventual discovery of the particle byJ. J. Thomson in 1897.
His scientific work was carried out in his spare time.[8] Aheliostat designed by Stoney is in theScience Museum Group collection.[9]
Stoney was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in June 1861 on the basis of beingthe author of papers on "The Propagation of Waves", "On the Rings seen in Fibrous Specimens of Calc Spar", and Molecular Physics, published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, et cetera, Distinguished for his acquaintance with the science of Astronomy & General Physics.[10]
Stoney proposed the first system of natural units in 1881.[5][11] He realized that a fixed amount of charge was transferred per chemical bond affected during electrolysis, theelementary chargee, which could serve as a unit of charge, and that combined with other known universal constants, namely thespeed of lightc and theNewtonian constant of gravitationG, a complete system of units could be derived. He showed how to derive units of mass, length, time and electric charge as base units. Due to the form in whichCoulomb's law was expressed, the constant 4πε0 was implicitly included,ε0 being thevacuum permittivity.
Like Stoney, Planck independently derived a system of natural units (of similar scale) some decades after him, using different constants of nature.
Hermann Weyl made a notable attempt to construct a unified theory by associating a gravitational unit of charge with the Stoney length. Weyl's theory led to significant mathematical innovations but his theory is generally thought to lack physical significance.[12][13]
Stoney married his cousin, Margaret Sophia Stoney, with whom he had two sons and three daughters.[14]
One of Stoney's sons, George Gerald Stoney, was a scientist. His daughterFlorence was a radiologist, while his daughterEdith is considered to be the first woman medical physicist. His most scientifically notable relative was his nephew, the Dublin-based physicistGeorge Francis FitzGerald.
His brother was the engineerBindon Blood Stoney.
He was second cousin of the grandfather of Ethel Sara Turing, the mother ofAlan Turing.
In 1899, Stoney became the first recipient of theBoyle Medal of theRoyal Dublin Society.
Stoney received anhonoraryDoctor of Science (D.Sc.) from theUniversity of Dublin in June 1902.[15]
In 1902, Stoney was elected a Member of theAmerican Philosophical Society.[16]
Craters onMars and theMoon are named in his honour.
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