Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/111

 said that Sir George Stokes had published in his own name but a very small part of the good he had done to the world. At the principal function, which was held in the Senate house, the delegates were received by the Vice Chancellor of the University; they presented the addresses of which they were bearers and these were handed to Sir George. In reply he said that he often thought, in reviewing his long life, that he might have worked harder, and he attributed his longevity to his comparative idleness—a remark which was cheered by the undergraduates in the gallery. A special meeting of his early love, the Cambridge Philosophical Society, was held and the papers there presented are published in a memorial volume.

In the summer of 1902 he was elected to the mastership of Pembroke College. Later in the year he took part with Lord Kelvin in making the presentation of a portrait of Prof. Tait to St. Peter's College. He died on February 1, 1903, in the 84th year of his age. In many respects the life of Stokes resembles that of Newton. Both were skilled experimenters, especially in optics; of Stokes it used to be said that if you gave him sunlight and three-quarters of an hour, there was no experiment in optics he could not perform. Both Newton and Stokes filled the Lucasian chair of mathematics; both represented Cambridge University in Parliament; both filled the offices of Secretary and President of the Royal Society; both received the dignity of Sir; and both lived to an advanced age. They also resembled one another in type of mind and in religious views; but Stokes never sat down to produce a work at all commensurate in labor or in importance with the Principia.