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FitzGerald made major contributions to developments in electromagnetic theory.
In 1889, two years after the Michelson-Morley experiment, FitzGerald suggested that the shrinkage of a body due to motion at speeds close to that of light would account for the result of that experiment. Lorentz, independently in 1895, gave a much more detailed description of the same kind. The FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction plays an important role in relativity.
FitzGerald was the first to suggest a method of producing radio waves and so helped to lay the basis of wireless telegraphy.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 1883 and received its Royal medal in 1899 for contributions to theoretical physics, especially optics and electrodynamics. He was described by Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) as
... living in an atmosphere of the highest scientific and intellectual quality, but always a comrade with every fellow-worker of however humble quality. My scientific sympathy and alliance with him have greatly ripened during the last six or seven years over the undulatory theory of light and the aether theory of electricity and magnetism.References elsewhere in this archive:
Tell me about FitzGerald's work on special relativity
References:
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