George Green - Final Years and Posthumous Fame

Final Years and Posthumous Fame

In his final years at Cambridge, Green became rather ill, and in 1840 he returned to Sneinton, only to die a year later. There are rumours that at Cambridge, Green had "succumbed to alcohol", and some of his earlier supporters, such as Sir Edward Bromhead, tried to distance themselves from him.

Green's work was not well known in the mathematical community during his lifetime. Besides Green himself, the first mathematician to quote his 1828 work was the Briton Robert Murphy (1806–1843) in his 1833 work. In 1845, four years after Green's death, Green's work was rediscovered by the young William Thomson (then aged 21), later known as Lord Kelvin, who popularised it for future mathematicians. According to the book "George Green" by D.M. Cannell, William Thomson noticed Murphy's citation of Green's 1828 essay but found it difficult to locate Green's 1828 work; he finally got some copies of Green's 1828 work from William Hopkins in 1845. Green died without any idea of his posthumous fame.

Green's work on the motion of waves in a canal anticipates the WKB approximation of quantum mechanics, while his research on light-waves and the properties of the ether produced what is now known as the Cauchy-Green tensor. Green's theorem and functions were important tools in classical mechanics, and were revised by Schwinger's 1948 work on electrodynamics that led to his 1965 Nobel prize (shared with Feynman and Tomonaga). Green's functions later also proved useful in analysing superconductivity. On a visit to Nottingham in 1930, Albert Einstein commented that Green had been 20 years ahead of his time. The theoretical physicist, Julian Schwinger, who used Green's functions in his ground-breaking works, published a tribute, entitled "The Greening of Quantum Field Theory: George and I," in 1993.

The George Green Library at the University of Nottingham is named after him, and houses the majority of the University's Science and Engineering Collection. In 1986, Green's Windmill was restored to working order. It now serves both as a working example of a 19th century windmill and as a museum and science centre dedicated to Green.

Westminster Abbey has a memorial stone for Green in the nave adjoining the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin.