Dates

• Existence: 1797 - 1886

Biography

Adhmar Jean Claude Barr de Saint-Venant (1797-1886), mathematician, was born at Seine-et-Marne, France, on 23 August 1797. He attended the cole Polytechnique before starting a career as a civil engineer. He attended lectures at the Collège de France, and taught mathematics at the école des Ponts et Chausses. Saint-Venant carried out work on mechanics, elasticity, hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. He died at St Ouen, Loir-et-Cher, on 6 January 1886. Sir George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903), 1st Baronet, mathematician and physicist, was born at Skreen, co. Sligo, on 13 August 1819. He attended schools in Dublin and Bristol before joining Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1837, where he was senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1841. He became a Fellow of Pembroke in 1841, and was Master, 1902-1903. While at Cambridge he developed a close friendship with William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. Stokes became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1849, a position he held until his death. He developed Lagrange's theory of the motion of viscous fluids, and carried out work on optics. He contributed to the discovery and development of spectrum analysis, and in 1852 discovered the nature of fluorescence. He was also instrumental in founding the modern science of geodesy. Stokes was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851, and served as its Secretary, 1854-1885, and President, 1885-1890. Between 1887 and 1891 he was the Conservative M.P. for Ca mbridge University. He was created baronet in 1889, and died in Cambridge on 1 February 1903.

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