A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

OBITUARY NOTICE

'The Observatory,' No. 438, August 1911

Dr G. JOHNSTONE STONEY, F.R.S.

By SIR ROBERT S. BALL, LL.D., F.R.S.

It is not easy to find a parallel to the remarkable career of the eminent man of science who has just passed from us, July 5, 1911. Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney was a man of profound learning in several branches of physical science. He made many investigations and illumined most difficult subjects by flashes of genius. To show what Stoney had done in astronomy we may refer to his series of papers on solar phenomena. To show what he did in experimental science we refer to his papers on molecular physics, either when he showed how the number of molecules in a given volume of gas could be calculated, or when he gave the famous explanation of the cause of the motion in Crookes's Radiometer. If we were to mention only one paper of Stoney's to illustrate the comprehensive grasp of his intellect we would take his " Survey of that part of the Range of Nature's Operations which Man is Competent to Study " *. This paper is a most instructive " estimate of what that little is which man can truly know, and of the contrast which necessarily prevails whenever the boundless range, both in time and space, of each actual operation in nature is considered in its relation to the limits in both directions at which any clear human knowledge concerning it must stop."

A glimpse of Dr. Stoney in his later years may be given. His health is no longer strong. His life is confined to a single floor of his house in the west of London. He greets his visitor with the kindness and courtesy that were characteristic of him throughout life. "I am now verging on 80," he remarks, "so there is not much more time left for working "; and then at once he plunges into scientific matters. His room is filled with books and papers and scientific instruments, often with the great additional interest that the instruments have been homemade. He will first ask his visitor to sit down at a remarkable arrangement of screens and lenses with ingenious makeshifts by which he is studying abstruse problems in the theory of telescopic vision. Then we are bidden to look through the spectroscope, where he has been investigating some delicate point about the new mercury light. Then a fine microscope will be opened, and Stoney will demonstrate how inadequate are the ordinary geometrical optics to the explanation of the microscope. He will show objects to illustrate that delicate phenomena, the reality of which seem at first unquestionable, are merely due to diffraction, and disappear under more perfect conditions, and he will draw a moral with regard to the canals in Mars. Then he will summon a domestic to blow the air-blast and give a performance from Sir Charles Parson's latest gramophone. Then he will sit down again, and with pencil and paper explain some profound point in the Fourier analysis of waves. We cannot leave until we have heard his views, always broad and far-seeing, on the latest phase of the University question. Then he would diverge into other public matters which he deemed of high importance, though into ordinary politics he did not often care to enter. Stoney was an incessant worker, generally trying to learn more of Nature's secrets, or to verify for himself the results that others had obtained. He was always most ready to help other scientific workers, even though such help involved much labour and cost him not a few of his precious hours. Many a man owes much of the inspiration of his life to the conversation of Stoney, and one who has known him for well over half a century can testify that he never heard Stoney utter an unworthy remark.

To those who knew Stoney only as a devoted man of science it will perhaps come as a surprise to learn that the main labours of his career had been those of a public official. After a brilliant university course in Trinity College, Dublin, where his mathematical powers were first discovered to himself, Stoney went as assistant to Lord Rosse in his famous observatory at Parsonstown. Those were the days in which the six-foot reflector had just accomplished its achievement of revealing for the first time the existence of spiral nebulae. In his work with Lord Rosse Stoney found an opening for his gift as a scrupulous and careful observer. With the keenest pleasure he threw himself into the duty of observing nebulae with the exceptional advantages at Parsonstown, and in those midnight watches he laid the foundation of a friendship with Lord Rosse which only terminated with the death of the great Earl in 1867. But Stoney did not remain long at Parsonstown; the newly founded Queen's University in Ireland sought a Professor of Natural Philosophy for Galway College, and Stoney accepted the office. As a professor in this institution Stoney did admirable work for five years but his abilities were then called for in a larger sphere. A vacancy occurred in 1857 in the office of Secretary to the Queen's University, and, on the recommendation of Lord Rosse, Stoney was appointed, and accordingly his residence was transferred from Galway to Dublin. The brilliant young physicist had thus found his life-work, and the interests of the Queen's University thenceforth became his absorbing occupation until 1882, when the Queen's University itself became merged in the larger scheme of the Royal University, an institution which Stoney lived long enough to see superseded by a still more recent development. During his residence in Dublin, Stoney exercised the most beneficent influence on the intellectual life in the city. Every moment that could be spared from those engrossing official labours, which were gradually added to as time went on, was devoted to scientific investigation or to the furtherance of useful objects. He became an Honorary Secretary of the Royal Dublin Society at a critical time in its career. In the service of this great society his labours were incessant, and they met with astonishing success. Nor were his energies confined merely to the development of the scientific side of the Society, in which he did most admirable work. The functions of the Royal Dublin Society are Protean, and the master mind of the Honorary Secretary was always there to guide for over twenty years. The fine portrait of Stoney which hangs in the stately rooms of the Royal Dublin Society at Leinster House represents an honorary officer whose work should be remembered in connection with the most momentous events in the history of the Society. The Society had a Library, a School of Art, a Natural History Museum, and a Botanic Gardens, and the State proposed to take over these departments. Thereupon ensued protracted discussions in which the diplomacy of Stoney and his persistent adhesion to the interests of the Society extorted the admiration even of those who differed from him as long as they could. Among the tens of thousands of visitors who go to the great Dublin Horse Show every autumn, few perhaps will be aware that it was mainly owing to the unselfish, negotiations of Stoney and his able colleagues that those Ball's Bridge premises were acquired, by which alone the Horse Show was rendered possible.

In 1893 Dr. Stoney and his family moved to London, where first at Hornsey Rise, in the north of London, and afterwards at 30 Chepstow Crescent, Notting Hill Gate, the remaining years of his life were passed in ceaseless work, notwithstanding the infirmities of advancing age.

The Boyle Medal of the Royal Dublin Society was awarded to Stoney in recognition of his excellent scientific work. In the Report of the Committee to which the question of this award was referred, we read the following passage relating to an investigation in which Stoney was especially interested, and which has proved very fruitful in science:--

Turning to another branch of Dr. Stoney's investigations in this domain of Physics, we must go back to 1867, when a Memoir was read by him before the Royal Society, pointing out the conditions which limit the heights to which the constituent gases of an atmosphere extend (" On the Physical Constitution of the Sun and Stars," Proc. R. D. S., 1868) The considerations contained in that paper were, in 1870, extended and brought before the Royal Dublin Society in a discourse which embraced an explanation of the absence of a lunar atmosphere. Subsequently further notes were brought before the Society; and finally, in 1897, in the ' Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society,' Dr. Stoney gave a full account of a theory which accounts for many observed facts regarding the atmospheres of heavenly bodies, e.g. the prevalence of large quantities of light gases--hydrogen and helium--in the Sun, the absence of atmosphere in the Moon, the apparently arid state of Mars and his poverty of atmosphere, as well as the seemingly abundant atmosphere of Jupiter. The almost complete absence of helium and hydrogen from the terrestrial atmosphere also received explanation from the interesting theory first put forth by Dr. Stoney.

Another physical subject which had occupied his attention for 40 years was the cause of the series of lines in spectra. In this connection he had introduced the useful word " electron," now of universal adoption, and in the words of the Report just quoted:--

According to Dr. Stoney the successive series of lines which he, and-- following in his footsteps--others, had determined in the spectra of gases, are referable to the motion of an electron within the molecule, or to an event following the same mathematical law. This motion gives rise to a definite series of elliptic partials, to each of which the motion of the electron may be referred and consequently the electro-magnetic disturbance represented by a definite line of the spectrum. The existence of double lines is attributed to perturbations of these orbits of the nature of apsidal motions.

The bold realisation of events which we are accustomed to associate with the vast cycles of astronomy as occurring within orbits too minute and during periods too transient for the mind to grasp is characteristic of the writer.

The recent and powerful method of research with which the work of Lorentz and of Zeeman has armed physicists is every day rendering acknowledgment to this beautiful theory of Dr. Stoney's.

Dr. Stoney was passionately fond of music, and made a study of it both from the musical and the scientific side. He was not himself a performer; as a young man, indeed, he had played the violin, but he found the temptation too great to resist not to spend time over it which he desired for Science. He persuaded the Royal Dublin Society to add to its many other functions that of affording an opportunity for hearing good chamber-music, and of endeavouring to educate the popular taste for such in Dublin in much the same way that the Monday Popular Concerts at the Albert Hall had done in London. The Royal Dublin Society has given a course of musical recitals each Winter Session now for many years.

G. Johnstone Stoney was born in February 1826 in Ire]and. He was the eldest son and the third child of George Stoney, of Oakley Park, King's Co., and of Anne, daughter of Bindon Blood, D.L., of Cranagher and Rockforrest, Co. Clare. His sister married the late Rev. William Fitzgerald, Bishop of Killaloe, and his only brother, Bindon Blood Stoney, F.R.S., was Engineer to the Port of Dublin. Dr. Stoney married his cousin, Margaret Stoney, and he leaves two sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Gerald Stoney, recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, is Manager of the Hon. Sir Charles Parson's Steam Turbine Works at Newcastle. The late Prof. George Francis Fitzgerald, F.R.S., was his nephew.

R. S. BALL.

'The Observatory,' No. 438, August 1911

* Phil. Mag 1899, vol. xlviii. p. 457.

Back to the Top | G. J. Stoney Biography Home | Quit | eMail: Dr Russell Naughton