INTRODUCTION:

 

Sir Joseph Larmor grew up in Belfast, the son of a shopkeeper. He was a student at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, Queen's University of Belfast, and St John's College, Cambridge, where he was Senior Wrangler. After teaching physics for a few years at Queen's College, Galway, he accepted a lectureship in mathematics at Cambridge University in 1885. In 1903 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position he held until his retirement in 1932. Larmor proposed that the ether may be represented as a homogenous fluid medium which was perfectly incompressible elastic. Larmor believed that ether was separated matter. He rejoined wiring Lord Kelvin model with this theory. Parallel to the development of the theory of ether Lorentz, Larmor published the Lorentz transformations in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in 1897, about two years before Hendrik Lorentz (1899, 1904) and eight years before Albert Einstein (1905). Larmor however, does not have the correct speed changes, including adding speed law, which later were found by Henri Poincaré.

 

DEVELOPMENT:

 

Sir. Joseph Larmor proposed that the ether may be represented as a homogenous fluid medium which was perfectly incompressible elastic. Larmor believed that ether was separated matter. He rejoined wiring Lord Kelvin model with this theory. Parallel to the development of the theory of ether Lorentz, Larmor published the Lorentz transformations in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in 1897, about two years before Hendrik Lorentz (1899, 1904) and eight years before Albert Einstein (1905). 

Larmor however, does not have the correct speed changes, including adding speed law, which later were found by Henri Poincaré. Larmor successfully predicted the phenomenon of time dilation through the orbiting electrons, and found that contraction FitzGerald - Lorentz must occur for bodies whose atoms are held together by electromagnetic forces. In his book Aether and Matter (1900), he returned to present the Lorentz transformations on the time dilation and length contraction (treating them as dynamic rather than kinematic effects). 

He opposed the theory of relativity Albert Einstein although he's backed by a short period of time. Larmor held that matter consisted of moving particles in the ether. Larmor believed the source of electric charge was a "particle" (already in 1894 he was referring to as the electron). Thus, in what was apparently the first specific prediction of time dilation, he wrote: "... individual electrons describe corresponding parts of their orbits in times shorter for the system in the ratio (1 - v2/c2) 1/2... "(Larmor 1897).

 

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

 

Sir. Joseph Larmor became a member of the London Mathematical Society in 1884 and he contributed much to the Society being a council member from 1887 until 1912. During his period on the council he was vice president in 1890 and 1891 and also served as treasurer of the Society for over twenty years from 1892 until 1914. He was president of the Society in 1914 and, in the same year, he was awarded the De Morgan Medal by the Society. 

The Royal Society elected Larmor as a Fellow 1892 and he served as secretary from 1901 to 1912. The Royal Society awarded him its Royal Medal in 1915 and its Copley Medal in 1921. He was honoured by various universities who awarded him honorary degrees: Dublin, Oxford, Belfast, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Birmingham, St Andrews, Durham and Cambridge.  Larmor motivated by his strong opposition to Home Rule for Ireland in February 1911 Larmor ran and was elected as Member of Parliament for Cambridge University with the Liberal Unionist Party.

He remained in parliament until the general election of 1922 when the Irish question had been resolved. After his retirement from Cambridge in 1932, Larmor returned to County Down in Northern Ireland. He received the honorary title of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Glasgow in June 1901.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Larmor

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Larmor.html