Summary
George Gabriel Stokes (1819–1903) was born in Skreen, County Sligo, and educated at home, in Dublin and in Bristol before going on to a lifelong career in Cambridge, brilliant even side by side with his friends Clerk Maxwell and Kelvin. His most important discovery was that of the true nature of fluorescence; but it is fitting also to remember that it was he who first demonstrated spectroscopically the respiratory function of haemoglobin (or cruorine, as he would have said himself) at a critical time in blood gas chemistry. Stokes’s name will ever be linked with the Cambridge school of mathematical physics, yet it is not unjust to recall that when he represented the University in Parliament his friends remembered that he was also an Irishman.
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Based on a paper read to the Section of the History of Medicine, February 24, 1965.
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Breathnach, C.S. George gabriel stokes on the function of haemoglobin. Ir. J. Med. Sc. 41, 121–125 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02943674
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02943674