George Francis FitzGerald

George Francis FitzGerald was born at Monkstown, Dublin, in August 1851. His family circumstances were almost perfectly devised for someone who would be a future professor at Trinity College, Dublin. His father, a Trinity professor, was to become a most distinguished prelate in the Church of Ireland. His mother was the sister of George Johnstone Stoney, the distinguished physicist who named the electron (by no means his major achievement). The FitzGerald children did not go to school but were tutored at home. George's tutor was a sister of George Boole, who was professor of mathematics and logic at the Queen's College, Cork, and wrote a classic book setting out the laws of thought.