442 Presidentship of George Gabriel Stokes 1885 



been the choice of the Royal Society on St. Andrew's Day 

 and Professor Tyndall now proposed that he should be 

 elected President of the Club. This proposal was seconded 

 by Admiral Richards and was carried unanimously by the 

 six members present. 



After an undergraduate career of remarkable brilliance 

 George Gabriel Stokes soon took his place at the head of 

 British mathematical physicists. His contributions to hydro- 

 dynamics and to the theory of light were of fundamental 

 importance and have been the suggestive model for his 

 followers in the same fields. He was appointed to the 

 Lucasian Professorship in 1849 an( ^ was elected into the 

 Royal Society in 1851. Next year the Society awarded 

 him the Rumford Medal in recognition of his important 

 papers on light. Two years later, as we have seen, he was 

 elected Secretary to the Society. For thirty-two years he 

 had held this responsible and often laborious position, con- 

 ducting the business with great tact and skill and by his 

 assiduous attention to the Philosophical Transactions and 

 other publications of the Society, increasing their value 

 and adding to the Society's reputation. With all this 

 intimate experience of the inner working of the institution 

 he was peculiarly fitted to preside over its Council and its 

 meetings. From 1887 to 1891 he represented Cambridge 

 University in Parliament, and though he was not a ready 

 speaker he paid much attention to the business of the House 

 of Commons and its Committees. In 1889 he was created 

 a baronet, and in 1899 he celebrated his Jubilee as a Cam- 

 bridge Professor, physicists of note and other leaders in 

 science from all civilised countries coming to attend the 

 festival. He was chosen Master of Pembroke College in 

 1902. He died in 1903 at the age of eighty-four years. 



The two new members elected this year are fortunately 

 still with us. J. Norman Lockyer has filled a prominent 

 place in the ranks of those who have advanced our know- 

 ledge of the heavenly bodies by the applications of spectrum 

 analysis; and as editor of Nature he has conferred a 

 boon upon students and the general public by the care and 



