George Francis FitzGerald was a brilliant 19th-century Irish physicist who is best remembered as one of the proposers of a theory of the relativity of space to speed, now known as the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction. This was the first incomplete theory of relativity and was used by Einstein in his special theory of relativity. It was not the area in which FitzGerald did most of his work, however.

He was born in Monkstown, Co Dublin, in 1851. His father, William, a Trinity professor, was to become the Church of Ireland bishop of Cork and later of Killaloe. His mother, Anne, was the sister of George Johnstone Stoney, the distinguished Irish physicist who named the electron.

FitzGerald's early education, together with that of his brothers and sisters, was undertaken at home, where they were tutored by M.A. Boole, a sister of George Boole, the professor of mathematics at University College Cork who is widely acknowledged as the father of computer science.

FitzGerald showed himself to be very able at mathematics and dextrous at mechanical construction. He entered Trinity College in Dublin at the age of 16, to study mathematics and experimental science, and graduated in 1871, at the top of his class. FitzGerald studied for six more years before winning a Trinity fellowship, in 1877.

Probably the work that most influenced him was A Treatise On Electricity And Magnetism, published by James Clerk Maxwell in 1873. Maxwell proposed a theory of electromagnetism that described how light travels through space as a coupled electrical-magnetic disturbance. FitzGerald was one of the minority of scientists who appreciated the full significance of Maxwell's work, and he began to push the theory forward.

FitzGerald was appointed a tutor at Trinity in 1877 and professor of natural and experimental philosophy in 1881. He was particularly interested in increasing the practical teaching of experimental physics and, throughout his career, he emphasised the importance of practical laboratory skills.

After FitzGerald won his fellowship, he began to publish his research results, principally, his work in optics and electrodynamics. In 1883, FitzGerald concluded that an oscillating electric current would produce electromagnetic waves.

This was experimentally confirmed by Heinrich Hertz in 1888 and used in the development of wireless telegraphy. FitzGerald was the first to suggest a method of producing radio frequency waves, which are so widely used today for radio and television, navigational aids, mobile phones, satellite communication and radio astronomy.

Nineteenth-century physicists believed a ghostly substance called the ether pervaded the universe. The fundamental nature of light was considered to be a pure wave, and it was very difficult to understand how this wave could travel through space if the ether didn't exist.

In 1887, the famous Michelson-Morley experiment attempted to conclusively demonstrate the universal ether framework. Basically, the speed of light was measured in two directions: parallel and perpendicular to Earth's motion through space.

If the ether existed, in one case the light would be travelling against an ether "headwind"; in the other, it would be moving across the wind. The two measured velocities would differ. No difference in velocity was detected.

In 1892, FitzGerald proposed an explanation of the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment. He proposed that moving bodies contract in the direction of motion and that the contraction cannot be measured because the measuring rods shrink by the same proportion.

Hendrik Lorentz of the Netherlands independently arrived at the same conclusion in 1895 and developed the idea mathematically into a much more detailed description. This work, which became known as the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction, was a significant step towards Einstein's special theory of relativity, of 1905, which visualised an identical contraction but abandoned the concept of the ether.

FitzGerald was, by all accounts, one of nature's gentlemen. He declared: "the function of the university is primarily to teach mankind . . . and not the instruction of the few who found it convenient to reside in the immediate neighbourhood."

He took a great interest in technical education and was prominently associated with the foundation of Kevin Street Technical School, in 1887. Also, he sat on the Belmore Commission, the recommendations of which led to the introduction of science to primary schools in 1900, sadly to be dropped by our native government in 1934.

FitzGerald died in 1901, at the early age of 49, an outcome determined at least in part by overwork. Apparently, he found it very difficult to turn down requests, a particularly bad habit in the academic world.

An insightful account of FitzGerald's contribution to prefiguring the theory of relativity, written by John Bell, possibly Ireland's greatest scientist of the 20th century, and abridged by Professor Denis Weaire of Trinity College, appeared in Physics World in September, 1992.

William Reville is a senior lecturer in biochemistry and director of microscopy at UCC

Last week's column on polio omitted a reference to an article by Wendy Orent published in the March/April 2000 edition of The Sciences, on which parts of the column were based. The omission occurred during the editing process