Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Stoney, George Johnstone
STONEY, GEORGE JOHNSTONE (1826–1911), mathematical physicist, born at Oakley Park, King's Co., Ireland, on 15 Feb. 1826, was elder son of George Stoney of Oakley Park by his wife Anne, second daughter of Bindon Blood of Cranagher and Rockforest, co. Clare. Bindon Blood Stoney [q. v. Suppl. II] was his only brother. His sister, who married her cousin, William FitzGerald, afterwards bishop of Cork and subsequently of Killaloe, was mother of Greorge Francis FitzGerald [q. v. Suppl. II]. Sir Bindon Blood, general R.E., G.C.B., and Sir Frederic Burton [q. v. Suppl. I] were also his cousins. Three members of the family besides himself — his brother Bindon, his eldest son, George, and his nephew, George Francis FitzGerald — were fellows of the Royal Society.
Stoney, whose father's Irish property had greatly depreciated in value after the Napoleonic wars, and had to be sold at the time of the Irish famine (1846–8), was sent with his brother to Trinity College, Dublin, where he paid his expenses by 'coaching.' There he had a distinguisbed career, and obtained in 1847 the second senior moderatorship in mathematics and physics. He graduated B.A. in 1848, proceeding M.A. in 1852. On leaving Trinity College, he was in 1848 appointed by Lord Rosse the first astronomical assistant at the Parsonstown Observatory, a post which he held till 1852. His interest in astronomy continued through life, and he contributed occasional papers on astronomical subjects to the scientific societies' journals, several of them being instigated by the expected appearance of a profuse shower of Leonid meteors in 1899 (Proc. Roy. Soc. lxiv. 403; Monthly Notices, vols. lvi.–lix). The present use of the cælostat in astronomical observation is largely due to his efforts in reviving a forgotten principle, and papers by him on improvements in the Foucault-Sidenstat as well as on the phenomena of shadow bands in eclipses will be found in the 'Monthly Notices.' While he was with Lord Rosse he unsuccessfully competed in 1852 for the fellowship at Trinity, winning the second place and the Madden prize. The same year he became through Lord Rosse's influence professor of natural philosophy at Queen's College, Gal way, one of his unsuccessful rivals being Professor Tyndall. After five years' work in Galway he returned to Dublin in 1857 as secretary of the Queen's University, with an office in Dublin Castle, and till the dissolution of the university in 1882 he devoted himself wholeheartedly to his duties, which involved the organisation of the scattered colleges constituting the imiversity. The excellence of Stoney's report and minutes on educational matters led the Irish under-secretary. Sir Thomas Aiskew Larcom [q. v.], to recommend Stoney as his successor on his own retirement in 1868. But Stoney approved of Gladstone's disestablishment policy, and declined the post, although the conservative Irish secretary. Lord Mayo, urged its acceptance. At the request of the civil service commissioners, Stoney soon after became superintendent of civil service examinations in Ireland, a post which he held till he left Dublin in 1893. He did much for Irish education. He was a member of the royal commission on the Queen's Colleges, 1885. He was an able advocate of higher education for women, and mainly through his exertions women obtained legal medical qualifications in Ireland before they were available in England or Scotland. His many essays in reviews on educational subjects include 'On the Demand for a Catholic University’ (Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1902). At the same time he was frequently consulted by the Irish government, not only on education, but (in virtue of his connection with the Royal Dublin Society) on questions of agriculture, fisheries, light railways, and the like. The death of his wife in 1872, and other family trouble, followed by two severe illnesses — small-pox in 1875 and typhoid in 1877 — enfeebled his health. These misfortunes, combined with his manifold official duties, greatly hampered his scientific research, which was the main interest of his life.
Physical optics was a subject to which Stoney gave much attention, and he treated it on somewhat original lines. One of his first papers explained by geometrical reasoning the conditions of the propagation of undulations of plane waves in media {Trans. Roy. Irish Acad. vol. 24, 1861). Late in life he pursued the subject in his ’Monograph on Microscopic Vision' (Phil. Mag. Oct.-Dec. 1896), in which he analysed and proved the fundamental proposition — first enunciated by Sir George Stokes in 1845 — that 'the light which emanates from the objective field may be resolved into undulations, each of which consists of uniform plane waves,' suffering no change as they advance. This theme was pursued after the close of his official life in several papers and memoirs in the 'Philosophical Magazine,' the last being a monograph on 'Telescopic Vision' (Aug.-Dec. 1908), in which he discussed among other matters the possibility of seeing very small markings on the planet Mars.
Valuable as these optical researches are, Stoney' s work in molecular physics and the kinetic theory of gases proved more important. An early paper on Boyle's law (Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. vol. vii. 1858) was followed ten years later (in Phil. Mag. Aug. 1868) by his paper ' On the Internal Motions of Gases compared with the Motions of Waves of Light,' in which he estimated the number of molecules in a gas at standard pressure and temperature. There followed inquiries into the conditions limiting planetary atmospheres. As early as 1868 he published a long paper 'On the Physical Constitution of the Sun and Stars' (Proc. Roy. Soc. 1868), in which he first suggested limits of atmospheres. Stoney considered this paper one of his chief achievements. In a very valuable contribution, 'On Atmospheres of Planets and Satellites' (Trans. Roy. Soc. Dublin, 1897, vi. 305), Stoney afterwards explained from inductive reasoning the absence of hydrogen and helium from the atmosphere of the earth, and the absence of an atmosphere from the moon and from the satellites and minor planets of the solar system. This paper was reprinted in the 'Astrophysical Journal' (vii. 25), and gave rise to controversy, but Stoney's position was unshaken. His investigations as to helium are of great importance in view of recent inquiries into the length of geological epochs, and mto the past history of the radio-activity of the materials of the earth's crust.
To Stoney was due the introduction of the word 'electron' into the scientific vocabulary. In a paper 'On the physical units of nature,' which he read before the British Association at Belfast in 1874 (printed in Phil. Mag. May 1881), he pointed out that 'an absolute unit of quantity of electricity exists in that amount of it which attends each chemical bond or valency.' He proposed that this quantity should be made the unit of electricity, and for it subsequently suggested the name 'electron' in place of the old name 'corpuscle' proposed by Prof. J. J. Thomson (cf. Phil. Mag. Oct. 1894). Stoney worked with admirable results on the periodic motion of the atom and its connection with the spectrum (Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. Jan. 1876 ; Trans. Roy. Soc. Dublin, May 1891). To the units of physical science and their nomenclature Stoney devoted much of his attention. He served on the committee of the British Association for the selection and nomenclature of dynamical an^ electrical units in 1873, which adopted the C[entimetre] G[ramme] S[econd] system of units in England. He did much work in physical mensuration, and strove to facilitate the introduction of the metric system into England. In 1888 Stoney entered upon a study of the numerical relations of the atomic weights (see Proc. Roy. Soc. April 1888). His versatihty was also illustrated by papers on 'The Magnetic Effect of the Sun or Moon on Instruments at the Earth's Surface' (Phil. Mag. Oct. 1861) ; 'On the Energy expended in driving a Bicycle' (Trans. Roy. Dublin Soc. 1883, with his son) ; 'On the Relation between Natural Science and Ontology' (Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc. 1890), and many papers on abstract physics. In bacteriology he suggested that the source of the life energy in bacteria was to be found in their bombardment by the faster moving molecules surrounding them, whose velocity is great enough to drive them well into the organism, and carry in energy, of which they can avail themselves (Phil. Mag. April 1890). Music also claimed his attention, and he wrote papers on musical shorthand and on echoes (Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc. 1882), and did much for the advance of musical culture in Dublin by inducing the council of the Royal Dublin Society to inaugurate chamber music concerts by leading European musicians.
During the twenty years that he was hon. secretary of the Royal Dublin Society he zealously fulfilled the duties of the office at a period when the affairs of the society demanded much attention. He was afterwards vice-president till 1893, and to its 'Transactions' he communicated most of the earlier results of his researches. He received the society's first Boyle medal in 1899. He also became hon. D.Sc. of Queen's University in Ireland in 1879, and hon. Sc.D. of the University of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1902. Stoney's work received recognition from learned societies at home and abroad. He was a foreign member of the Academy of Science at Washington, and of the Philosophical Society of America and a corresponding member of the Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti di Benevento. He regularly attended the meetings of the British Association, served on several committees, and acted as president of section A at the meeting at Sheffield in 1879. Elected F.R.S. in 1861, he was vice-president of the society in 1898-9, and he was a member of the council (1898-1900). He was a visitor of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and of the Royal Institution. He was also a member of the joint permanent eclipse committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, and of several international committees for scientific objects.
In 1893 Stoney left Dublin for London, in order to give his daughters the opportunity, denied them at that time in Dublin, of university education. He settled first at Hornsey and afterwards at Notting Hill, engaging in physical experiments, principally optical, and in writing scientific papers. Stoney, who was always ready to help younger scientific men, died on 5 July 1911 at his residence, 30 Chepstow Crescent, Notting Hill Gate, W. After cremation his ashes were buried in Dundrum, CO. Dublin. Stoney married in Jan. 1863 his cousin, Margaret Sophia (d. 1872), second daughter of Robert Johnstone Stoney of Parsonstown, sister of Canon Stoney, and left issue two sons and three daughters. His elder son, George Gerald, F.R.S. , holds a Watt medal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and was till 1912 manager of the turbine works of the Hon. Sir Charles Parsons, F.R.S. Of the daughters Edith Anne (equal to seventeenth wrangler in the mathematical tripos at Cambridge in 1893, and M.A. Trinity College, Dublin) is lecturer in physics at the London School of Medicine for Women; the second, Florence Ada, M.D., B.S. London, is in practice in London, and is head of the electrical department. New Hospital for Women, London.
A collection of Stoney's scientific writings is being prepared for publication by his eldest daughter.
Of four portraits in oils, one painted in 1883 by Sir Thomas Jones, P.R.H.A., for the old students of the Queen's University on its dissolution, was presented by them to the Royal Dublin Society, in whose council room in Leinster House, Kildare Street, Dublin, it now hangs; a second portrait by the same artist (1883), presented to Stoney, as well as two other portraits (1896) — one in oils and one in chalk — by his third daughter, Gertrude, are in the possession of his elder daughters at 20 Reynolds' Close, Hampstead.
[Proc. Roy. Soc, 86a, 1912 (with portrait; art. by Prof. J. Joly); Abstract of Mins. Roy. Irish Acad. 1911–12; The Observatory, Aug. 1911 (notice by Sir Robert Ball, F.R.S.); Nature, 12 July 1911 (art. by Prof. F. T. Tronton, F.R.S.); The Times, and Daily Express (Dublin), 6 July 1911; E. E. Fournier d'Albé, The Electron Theory, with preface by and frontispiece portrait of Stoney, 1907; and Contemporary Chemistry, 1911; notes from Mr. H. P. Hollis; information from son and from daughter, Edith A. Stoney.]