STOKES' MATHEMATICAL PAPERS 265 



Cambridge has nurtured the school which numbers in its ranks Sir William Thomson 

 and Prof. Clerk Maxwell. 



All of these, and Stokes also, undoubtedly owe much (more perhaps than they can 

 tell) to the late William Hopkins. He was, indeed, one whose memory will ever be 

 cherished with filial affection by all who were fortunate enough to be his pupils. 



But when they were able, as it were, to walk without assistance, they all (more or 

 less wittingly) took Stokes as a model. And the model could not but be a good one : 

 it is all but that of Newton himself. Newton's wonderful combination of mathematical 

 power with experimental skill, without which the Natural Philosopher is but a fragment 

 of what he should be, lives again in his successor. Stokes has attacked many questions 

 of the gravest order of difficulty in pure mathematics, and has carried out delicate and 

 complex experimental researches of the highest originality, alike with splendid success. 

 But several of his greatest triumphs have been won in fields where progress demands 

 that these distinct and rarely associated powers be brought simultaneously into action. 

 For there the mathematician has not merely to save the experimenter from the fruitless 

 labour of pushing his enquiries in directions where he can be sure that (by the processes 

 employed) nothing new is to be learned ; he has also to guide him to the exact place at 

 which new knowledge is felt to be necessary and attainable. It is on this account that 

 few men have ever had so small a percentage of barren work, whether mathematical or 

 experimental, as Stokes. 



The following review by Tait of Stokes' Mathematical and Physical 

 Papers (Vols. i and n) appeared in Nature, December 13, 1883 : 



There can be but one opinion as to the value of the collection before us, and (sad 

 to say) also as to the absolute necessity for it. The author, by common consent of all 

 entitled to judge, takes front rank among living scientific men as experimenter as well 

 as mathematician. But the greater part of his best work has hitherto been buried in 

 the almost inaccessible volumes of the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions, in company 

 with many other papers which deserve a much wider circulation than they have yet 

 obtained. Stokes' well-deserved fame was thus practically secured by means of a mere 

 fraction of his best work.... 



The present publication will effect a very remarkable amount of transference of 

 credit to the real author, from those who (without the possibility of suspicion of mala 

 fides) are at present all but universally regarded as having won it. Two or three years 

 ago, only, the subject for a Prize Essay in a Continental scientific society was The 

 nature of unpolarized, as distinguished from polarized, light. But all that science is even 

 yet in a position to say, on this extremely curious subject, had been said by Stokes 

 thirty years ago in the Cambridge Philosophical Transactions.... 



Prof. Stokes has wisely chosen the chronological order, in arranging the contents of 

 the volumes. Such a course involves, now and then, a little inconvenience to the 

 reader ; but this is much more than compensated for by the insight gained into the 

 working of an original mind, which seems all along to have preferred a bold attack upon 

 each more pressing scientific difficulty of the present, to attempts at smoothing the 

 beginner's road into regions already well explored. When, however, Prof. Stokes does 



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