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Sir George Gabriel Stokes, 1st Baronet, FRS (/stoʊks/; 13 August 1819 – 1 February 1903) was an Irish mathematician and physicist. Born in County Sligo, Ireland, Stokes spent all of his career at the University of Cambridge, where he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1849 until his death in 1903. As a physicist, Stokes made seminal contributions to fluid mechanics, including the Navier–Stokes equations; and to physical optics, with notable works on polarisation and fluorescence. As a mathematician, he popularised "Stokes' theorem" in vector calculus and contributed to the theory of asymptotic expansions. Stokes, along with Felix Hoppe-Seyler, first demonstrated the oxygen transport function of haemoglobin, and showed colour changes produced by the aeration of haemoglobin solutions.

Stokes was made a baronet by the British monarch in 1889. In 1893 he received the Royal Society's Copley Medal, then the most prestigious scientific prize in the world, "for his researches and discoveries in physical science". He represented Cambridge University in the British House of Commons from 1887 to 1892, sitting as a Conservative. Stokes also served as president of the Royal Society from 1885 to 1890 and was briefly the Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Stokes's extensive correspondence and his work as Secretary of the Royal Society has led him to be referred to as a gatekeeper of Victorian science, with his contributions surpassing his own published papers. (Full article...)

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