George Green, George Stokes 123 



point out that the use of a certain mathematical function 

 already introduced by Laplace was now employed to the 

 greatest advantage under the name " potential," a term which 

 has proved of such universal utility in all branches of physics, 

 owing to its nominal as well as real connexion with the 

 conception of " potential energy." 



Here begins the golden age of mathematics and physics 

 at Cambridge. Its period is coincident with the scientific 

 activity of George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), which began 

 in 1842, and extended, with but slightly diminished vigour, 

 to the end of last century. Stokes' position as an investi- 

 gator is among the greatest, but his influence cannot be 

 measured merely by the record of his published work. He 

 united two generations of scientific workers by the love and 

 veneration centred in their gratitude for the assistance and 

 encouragement which, with kindly and genuine interest, he 

 showered upon them out of the wealth of his knowledge and 

 experience. Even those who intellectually were his equals 

 owed much to his sound and impartial judgment. Turning 

 away from the grave which was closing over his lifelong 

 friend, Kelvin was heard to say : " Stokes is gone, and I 

 shall never return to Cambridge." 



Stokes' first papers dealt with fluid motion, a favourite 

 subject, to which he frequently returned. It is impossible 

 in an account intended to be intelligible to the non- 

 mathematical reader, to indicate even the general import 

 of his fundamental investigations in one of the most difficult 

 subjects of applied mathematics. The interest attaching to 

 the shape and propagation of waves will, however, be readily 

 understood, and the importance of questions of stability, 

 which enter so much into the recent advances of aero- 

 nautics, does not need emphasizing at the present time. 

 Both questions rest on that most careful consideration of 

 the fundamental principles of fluid motion, to which Stokes 

 applied his great critical powers. 



The subject of light is, perhaps more than any branch 

 of physics, indebted to Stokes. The problems of the aberra- 

 tion of light and the phenomena of double refraction were 

 the first to attract his attention, and he recurs frequently to 

 the question of the constitution of the luminiferous aether. 



