George Francis FitzGerald

thumb|George Francis FitzGerald George Francis FitzGerald FRS FRSE (3 August 1851 – 22 February 1901) was an Irish academic and physicist who served as Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) from 1881 to 1901. He is known for his work in electromagnetic theory and for the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction, which became an integral part of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him, as is a building at TCD. Quotes When two surfaces at different temperatures are in presence of one another with a gas between them, there exists a force tending to separate them. The assumption of this force explains a very great number of phenomena, including the motion of the arms of Mr. Crooke's radiometers and the so-called spheroidal state of liquids. March 1878 quoted in The Scientific Writings of the Late George Francis FitzGerald https://books.google.com/books?id=2le7lpdAJ5EC&pg=PA18 (p. 18) If Universities do not study useless subjects, who will? The Value of Useless Studies Nature 25 February 1892 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000047662452;view=1up;seq=433 (p. 392) External links Category:Physicists from Ireland Category:1901 deaths Category:Academics from Ireland Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:1851 births Category:People from Dublin