Sir George Gabriel Stokes

Armagh Planetarium and Observatory

The famous physicist and mathematician Prof. Sir George Gabriel Stokes’ FRS father was Rev. Gabriel Stokes, Rector of Skreen, County Sligo, and his mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. John Haughton, Rector of Kilrea, County Derry. While he spent his entire career at University of Cambridge in England as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, he is Irish by birth.  

His contributions to science include seminal work on fluid dynamics (Navier–Stokes equations, among others), polarisation (Stokes parameters) and fluorescence (Stokes shift). His mathematical work includes the Stokes’ (or Kelvin–Stokes) Theorem in vector calculus. He also improved upon John Francis Campbell’s design of a sunshine recorder in 1879; the Campbell–Stokes sunshine recorder is in widespread use for meteorological observations to this day. He was Fellow of the Royal Society and its President from 1885 to 1890, and briefly Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.  

It is perhaps to be expected that Stokes strayed from his work on fluid dynamics and optics into meteorology with the sunshine recorder, for he married Mary Susanna Robinson, daughter of Rev. Dr Thomas Romney Robinson, Director of Armagh Observatory, in 1857. The wedding took place in St Patrick’s Cathedral (Church of Ireland), Armagh. Prof. Stokes and Dr Robinson were in constant correspondence, and the Professor in fact regularly visited Armagh Observatory. His daughter wrote: 

“Later in the Long Vacations we always went over to stay at the Observatory at Armagh, and afterwards went with the Armagh party to some seaside place, oftenest the magnificent neighbourhood of the Giant’s Causeway, or occasionally some other equally quiet locality.” 

(From: “Memoir and Scientific Correspondence of the Late George Gabriel Stokes, Bart.” available here) 

It should not be surprising, then, that Armagh Observatory has been using the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder as part of the meteorological records since 1880 – when Romney Robinson was still its Director – immediately after its unveiling by Stokes. After the Director’s death, Romney Robinson’s second wife, Lucy Jane Edgeworth, moved to Cambridge to live with her step-daughter and Prof. Stokes. 

Sign up to our Newsletter

To keep up to date with our latest news & events.

Newsletter Signup
Form Validation