George Francis Fitzgerald
ISBN 978-3-901585-12-8 (softcover; English)
first edition, June 2009; 160 pages; 28 Fig. in black/white; 236×167 mm (H×W); 330 g;
€ 25.00 (recommended retail price, incl. 10% VAT)
Denis Weaire FRS, one of Fitzgerald’s successors as Erasmus Smith Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy in Trinity College Dublin, has gathered together a wealth of information and critical comment on one of the 19th century’s most imaginative and inspiring physicists.
It includes five essays originally commissioned by Weaire for the European Review, together with notes on Fitzgeraldbs publications and other records of his career. The list of his papers extends far beyond the supposedly complete Scientific Writings edited by Joseph Larmor, so they may fairly be described as brief but hardly sparse. But his chief influence remains to be found in his correspondence. This publication coincides with the opening up of the Fitzgerald Correspondence by the Royal Dublin Society to the wider world of scholarship, through Web access. It is an extraordinary record of the “invisible college” that centred on Fitzgerald, not just in electromagnetic theory, the invention of radio and the early hints of relativity, but over a wide range of pure and applied science.
Fitzgerald may have been restless and discontented by the time of his death in 1901, but he had achieved an unrivalled reputation for selfless generosity in advancing science for the common good.
(by Denis Weaire FRS, TCD/School of Physics, May 2009)
The Authors (in alphabetic order):
- David Attis
- J. Michael D. Coey
- Bruce J. Hunt
- James G. O’Hara
- Michael Purser
- Denis Weaire
The Editor:
Denis Weaire FRS, emeritus Professor of Physics, Trinity College Dublin.
