Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/110

 The second volume of Stokes' Mathematical and Physical Papers was published in 1883; the third in 1901. This long delay was due to the fact that his time was engrossed by scientific business; in his later years he seems to have had little ambition in the direction of scientific publication. In 1885 Prof. Stokes after having discharged the duties of Secretary of the Royal Society for thirty years, was elected President, which office he held for the usual period of five years. For twenty years after 1887 he represented the University of Cambridge in Parliament. In 1889 he received the honor of a baronetcy.

In 1891 Sir George Stokes was made one of the changing quaternion to which Tait referred; he was appointed, by the University of Edinburgh, lecturer on the Gifford foundation. Lord Gifford, one of the judges of the High Court of Justice in Scotland, died about 1887, leaving by his will a sum of money to each of the Scottish Universities. The object of the endowment was to appoint for one or two years a thinker, who might not belong to any Christian denomination provided only he was a true and reverent inquirer after truth, to deliver a course of public lectures on some point bearing on Natural Theology, treating the subject just as any other science. Stokes delivered two courses of lectures in 1891 and 1893. Trained in Cambridge University where little attention was paid to philosophy, he seems to have felt a difficulty in treating Natural Theology "just as any other science" and he could not speak with the same authority as when he was discoursing on light.

Four years ago (in 1899) the University of Cambridge celebrated in brilliant style the jubilee of his professorship. Delegates were invited from the learned societies; sixty-eight of them, mostly British, were represented. The celebration of the jubilee began with the delivery of the Rede lecture by Prof. Cornu of the école polytechnique of Paris; the endowment for this lecture dates back to 1524. The subject was appropriate to the occasion: "The wave-theory of light, its influence on modern physics." At an evening reception a bust of Stokes was presented to Pembroke College and a replica to the University. The presentation was made by Lord Kelvin who