George Green : mathematician and physicist, 1793-1841 : the background to his life and work /

Green's theorems and Green's functions are well known to physicists and mathematicians, but not Green himself. At age 36 Green, a miller, inherited his father's property, giving him the means to pursue his great love, mathematics. Although his schooling was limited to four terms, all before age nine, he published by subscription An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism (1828), which not only advanced these theories but introduced techniques of analysis that have found wide use in classical physics, quantum physics, and relativity. This essay led to Green's enrollment at Cambridge at age 40 and to seven professionally productive years until his early death. All of Green's unpublished papers and almost all of his correspondence were lost, leaving author Cannell with few primary sources. A mathematical appendix reconstructs Green's contributions to analysis. Illustrations include portraits of men who were important enough to Green to be described in the text but, alas, no portrait of Green himself exists. Despite the efforts of a highly competent biographer, we are left with incomplete understanding of how this Nottingham miller came to produce work that ranks in depth with that of Newton and Maxwell. All levels. A. B. Stewart; Wright State University