George Francis FitzGerald (1851 - 1901)

* 3 August 1851, † 21 February 1901

George Francis FitzGerald was born on 3 August 1851 in Kill-o’-the Grange, Monkstown, Co. Dublin, Ireland. George FitzGerald was a Irish physicist best known for the FitzGerald Contraction (“The Ether and the Earth’s Atmosphere” (1889)) conjecturing that if all moving objects were foreshortened in the direction of their motion, it would account for the curious null-results of the Michelson–Morley experiment. This was the first way of explaining special relativity. George Francis FitzGerald died on 21 February 1901 in Dublin, Ireland.