George Francis Fitzgerald Letters

George Francis Fitzgerald Letters

George Francis FitzGerald (1851-1901) was a prominent 19th century Irish physicist and a Member of the RDS. He is probably best remembered, along with Hendrik Lorentz, as a proposer of the first incomplete theory of relativity, The FitzGerald-Lorentz Contraction. Containing over 2,000 items of correspondence from some of the leading scientific figures of the period, the Fitzgerald Letters are a valuable resource for the study of 19th century science.

In 2008 the RDS Committee of Science and Technology and the RDS Library & Archives collaborated on a project to digitize and catalogue the Fitzgerald Letters, which are now available here for the first time as a complete digital collection.