Education and Employment Positions
Stoney was born at Oakley Park, near Birr, County Offaly, in the Irish Midlands, in an old-established Anglo-Irish family. He attended Trinity College, Dublin, graduating with a B.A. in 1848. From 1848 to 1852 he worked as an astronomy assistant to William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse at Birr Castle, County Offaly, where Parsons had built the world's largest telescope, the 72-inch Leviathan of Parsonstown. Simultaneously Stoney continued to study physics and mathematics and was awarded an M.A. by Trinity College Dublin in 1852.
From 1852 to 1857 he was professor of physics at Queen's College Galway. From 1857 to 1882 he was employed as Secretary of the Queen's University of Ireland, an administrative job based in Dublin. In the early 1880s he moved to the post of superintendent of Civil Service Examinations in Ireland, a post he held until his retirement in 1893. In that year, he took up residence in London. Stoney died in 1911 at his home in Notting Hill, London. During his decades of non-scientific employment responsibilities in Dublin, Stoney continued to do scientific research on his own. He also served for decades as honorary secretary and then vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society, a scientific society modelled after the Royal Society of London, and after his move to London Stoney served on the council of that society too. Additionally he intermittently served on scientific review committees of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from the early 1860s on.
Read more about this topic: George Johnstone Stoney
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