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 (p. 18)


 * If Universities do not study useless subjects, who will?
 * (p. 392)