He was described as 'one who rekindled the dying embers of the old physics to prepare the advent of the new'. Larmor saw himself as part of an Irish scientific tradition and was involved in editing the collected works of a number of Irish scientists. Larmor spent most of his career in Great Britain but returned to Ireland most summers and moved back permanently after his retirement from the Lucasian chair. He was committed to the Union of Ireland with Great Britain and this led him to serve in Parliament as a member for Cambridge University from 1911 to 1922.
Further reading:
Irish Innovators in Science and Technology. Published jointly by the Royal Irish Academy and Enterprise Ireland it is an updated and enlarged version of the two-volume People and Places in Irish Science & Technology published in 1985 and 1990. The book is edited by Charles Mollan, William Davis and Brendan Finucane and it contains biographical information on 155 men and women who have contributed to Ireland's scientific heritage.
Jed Z. Buchwald: From Maxwell to Microphysics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1985.
Arthur S. Eddington: Joseph Larmor, Obituary Notices of the Fellows of the Royal Society, 4 197-207, 1944.
Joseph Larmor: Aether and Matter, Cambridge, 1900.
Andrew Warwick: Frequency, Theorem and Formula: Remembering Joseph Larmor in Electromagnetic Theory, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, 49-60, 1993.
TomO'Connor: Natural Philosophy/Physics, From Queens College to National University, Tadgh Foley (ed), Four Courts Press, Dublin 1999. |