Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers
Green's functions (which I never understood).
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You are among friends!
George Green was born in 1793 and lived for most of his life in Sneinton on the outskirts of Nottingham. His father, also named George, was a baker who built and owned a brick windmill used to grind grain. The father died in 1841 and the mill fell into disuse and dereliction in 1860. In the early 1920s it became a factory manufacturing polish. I grew up in Loughborough Avenue, Sneinton and our house backed onto the field in which the Mill is sited. in 1947, when I was eight years old, the mill caught fire and the heat was so intense that we feared it might crack our windows. Once again, the mill became derelict and faced demolition, until it was acquired by Nottingham City Council in 1979.
Little was known locally of George Green until Nottingham University publicised his mathematical achievements. Funds were raised by the University in the mid 1980s enabling the mill to be fully refurbished. It was reopened in December 1986, is now a Grade 2 listed building, a working windmill and part of a science centre in honour of George Green, which is open to the public. No 3, Green's Gardens was also restored from near dereliction by Nottingham Buildings Preservations Trust as a residence for one of the Museum staff.
Green died in 1841 aged 47, and only came to prominence posthumously.
On a visit to Nottingham in 1930, Albert Einstein commented that Green had been 20 years ahead of his time. Westminster Abbey has a memorial stone for Green in the nave adjacent to the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin. His work and influence on applied physics had been largely forgotten until the publication of his biography by Mary Cannell in 1993. The George Green Library at the University of Nottingham is named after him, and houses the majority of the university's science and engineering collection. The George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research - a research group in the University of Nottingham engineering department - is also named after him.
His achievements were quite astounding.
In his youth, Green was described as frail with a dislike for working in his father's bakery.
However, as was common at the time he worked daily to earn his living at the age of five. His life story and contribution to mathematics is all the more remarkable in that he was almost entirely self-taught. He received only one year of formal schooling as a child, between the ages of 8 and 9. His father recognised his above average intellect, and being well off due to his successful bakery, he enrolled him in March 1801 at Robert Goodacre's Academy in Nottingham, where the extent of his mathematical teachings was limited to algebra, trigonometry and logarithms. Thus, his later mathematical contributions, which exhibited knowledge of very modern developments in mathematics, could not have resulted from his time at the Academy. He stayed for only four terms and it's thought that he'd probably exhausted all that they had to teach.
When his father died, his legacy enabled Green junior to abandon milling and pursue his mathematical interests. Sir Edward Bromhead, with whom Green shared correspondence pressed Green go to Cambridge. In 1832, aged nearly forty, Green was admitted as an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He graduated with a BA in 1838. A remarkable achievement given that he had only one year's formal education between the age of eight and nine. Sadly, he died three years after graduation. Who knows how much unrealised potential he took with him to the grave?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George...(mathematician)
The mill can be seen from the south of the river Trent from several miles away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green%27s_Mill,_Sneinton
When open again, the mill & science centre is well worth a visit if in the area:
https://www.greensmill.org.uk/about/...-the-windmill/
Nothing at all to do with 'audiophoolery' but hopefully given how the thread has drifted, I hope it's interesting enough to merit a mention.
(When I started this thread, I never imagined that it would be destined to have a longer run than 'The Mousetrap'!
