Book Reviews: The miller of Sneinton

D.M. Cannell, George Green, Mathematician & Physicist 1793-1841. Athlone Press, 1993. Pp. xxvi + 265, £35 (hdbk). ISBN-0-485-11433X. Most mathematicians will have used, or at least know of, Green’s Theorem and Green’s functions, but they are probably unaware of the unusual background of their eponymous creator. Green also made pioneering contributions in electricity (where he introduced the term ‘potential’), magnetism, hydrodynamics, elasticity, sound and light. Indeed, the intellectual profundity of his work, albeit encompassed in a mere ten publications, was recognized on the 200th anniversary of his birth, by the dedication of a plaque in Westminster Abbey where his name will be found amongst the greatest British men of science - Isaac Newton, John Frederick Herschel, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, George Gabriel Stokes, Lord Rayleigh, Lord Rutherford and J.J. Thomson. All of these had their work recognized during their own lifetime; in marked contrast, George Green, on his death, earned only a modest paragraph in a local newspaper as his sole obituary, and a grave neglected and forgotten for nearly 100 years. There are no portraits or photographs of him, no diaries or working papers, and little in the way of correspondence. Mary Cannell’s book, which is written to interest the lay reader as much as the scientific specialist, provides the background to Green’s unusual life and work.