Larmor, Joseph

Larmor, Joseph. 1900. Aether and Matter A Development of the Dynamical Relations of the Aether to Material Systems on the Basis of the Atomic Constitution of Matter. Cambridge Cambridge University Press. 

Larmor, Joseph. Sir George Gabriel Stokes. Memoir and Scientific Correspondence. 

Letter from Henry Armstrong to Joseph Larmor, 21 October 1905, RSL, Lml7. 

In the 1870s, Wilhelm Weber proposed that the atoms of chemical elements consisted of a massive, negatively charged nucleus and a fighter, positively charged satellite. In 1894 Joseph Larmor presented a theory of the ether in which stable arrangements of electrons constitute atoms. In Larmor s theory, electrorrs were vortices in the ether, permanent and all alike, that were also universal constituents of matter (5). 

Named after Joseph Larmor (1857-1942), Irish physicist and professor at Cambridge University who highlighted the concept of precession in atomic physics. 

The Scientific Papers of the Honourable [jic] Henry Cavendish, F.R.S. Volume I The Electrical Researches Edited from the Published Papers, and the Cavendish Manuscripts in the possession of.. . the Duke of Devonshire. .. by James Clerk Maxwell.. . Revised by Sir Joseph Larmor Volume II Chemical and Dynamical. Edited from the Published Papers, and the Cavendish Manuscripts in the possession of. . . the Duke of Devonshire. .. by Sir Edward Thorpe. . . , etc., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1921. Referred to as Set. Pap. ... 

The Cambridge University Library has a large collection of Stokes s correspondence, given to them by Sir Joseph Larmor, who collected many of them In a memoir (14). An Index to all this was compiled In 1976 (15), so I have been able to trace much of Reynolds correspondence with Stokes. 

Like every form and expression of appropriation, opinions differed among the members of the chemistry community as to the use of mathematics. The chemist Edward Frankland predicted that the future of chemistry was to lay in its alliance with mathematics. The chemist Paul Schiitzenberger believed that mathematics would become an instrument as useful to the chemist as the balance (Coulson 1974, 10). Van t Hoff could not have been more mathematical in his systematic study of chemical thermodynamics. Ostwald s extensive use of mathematics would have been much more influential had it not been undermined by his insistence on energetics. Lewis was not less skilled in mathematics. Even Joseph Larmor and Joseph John Thomson before him tried to propose a mathematical framework for dealing with chemical problems. But there was also strong resistance against such programs. 

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