Abstract :
THE STONEYS were a family of overachievers. Father George Johnstone Stoney was the physicist who coined the term ???electron???, while his brother Bindon Blood Stoney was the engineer behind Dublin Port. His nephew George Fitzgerald was a respected physicist and one of the first to attempt to take to the air in a Lilienthal glider, for which feat he declined to remove his top hat. That???s how they did things in Dublin in the 1890s. George Stoney also had two daughters, Edith Anne and Florence. Edith was a brilliant mathematician at a time when such things were still considered a little ???unbecoming??? for a lady. She secured a scholarship to Newnham College Cambridge (and a First in the part I Mathematics tripos) but as a woman could not receive a full degree from the university.
