'Transactions' he communicated most of the earlier results of his researches. He received the society's first Boyle medal in 1899. He also became hon. D.Sc. of Queen's University in Ireland in 1879, and hon. Sc.D. of the University of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1902. Stoney's work received recognition from learned societies at home and abroad. He was a foreign member of the Academy of Science at Washington, and of the Philosophical Society of America and a corresponding member of the Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti di Benevento. He regularly attended the meetings of the British Association, served on several committees, and acted as president of section A at the meeting at Sheffield in 1879. Elected F.R.S. in 1861, he was vice-president of the society in 1898-9, and he was a member of the council (1898-1900). He was a visitor of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and of the Royal Institution. He was also a member of the joint permanent eclipse committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, and of several international committees for scientific objects.
In 1893 Stoney left Dublin for London, in order to give his daughters the opportunity, denied them at that time in Dublin, of university education. He settled first at Hornsey and afterwards at Notting Hill, engaging in physical experiments, principally optical, and in writing scientific papers. Stoney, who was always ready to help younger scientific men, died on 5 July 1911 at his residence, 30 Chepstow Crescent, Notting Hill Gate, W. After cremation his ashes were buried in Dundrum, CO. Dublin. Stoney married in Jan. 1863 his cousin, Margaret Sophia (d. 1872), second daughter of Robert Johnstone Stoney of Parsonstown, sister of Canon Stoney, and left issue two sons and three daughters. His elder son, George Gerald, F.R.S. , holds a Watt medal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and was till 1912 manager of the turbine works of the Hon. Sir Charles Parsons, F.R.S. Of the daughters Edith Anne (equal to seventeenth wrangler in the mathematical tripos at Cambridge in 1893, and M.A. Trinity College, Dublin) is lecturer in physics at the London School of Medicine for Women; the second, Florence Ada, M.D., B.S. London, is in practice in London, and is head of the electrical department. New Hospital for Women, London.
A collection of Stoney's scientific writings is being prepared for publication by his eldest daughter.
Of four portraits in oils, one painted in 1883 by Sir Thomas Jones, P.R.H.A., for the old students of the Queen's University on its dissolution, was presented by them to the Royal Dublin Society, in whose council room in Leinster House, Kildare Street, Dublin, it now hangs; a second portrait by the same artist (1883), presented to Stoney, as well as two other portraits (1896) — one in oils and one in chalk — by his third daughter, Gertrude, are in the possession of his elder daughters at 20 Reynolds' Close, Hampstead.
[Proc. Roy. Soc, 86a, 1912 (with portrait; art. by Prof. J. Joly); Abstract of Mins. Roy. Irish Acad. 1911–12; The Observatory, Aug. 1911 (notice by Sir Robert Ball, F.R.S.); Nature, 12 July 1911 (art. by Prof. F. T. Tronton, F.R.S.); The Times, and Daily Express (Dublin), 6 July 1911; E. E. Fournier d'Albé, The Electron Theory, with preface by and frontispiece portrait of Stoney, 1907; and Contemporary Chemistry, 1911; notes from Mr. H. P. Hollis; information from son and from daughter, Edith A. Stoney.]
STORY, ROBERT HERBERT, D.D. (1835–1907), principal of Glasgow University, born at Rosneath manse, Dumbartonshire, on 28 Jan. 1835, was only surviving son of Robert Story (1790–1859) [q.v.], parish minister of Rosneath, by his wife Helen Boyle Dunlop. After home teaching from his father and learning mathematics and other subjects at the parish school, he studied arts at Edinburgh University (1849-54), gaining distinction in literature and philosophy. He spent a semester in 1853 at Heidelberg. He won prizes for poetry, and Professor Aytoun urged him to discipline his gift for verse; he wrote later much occasional poetry, including some excellent hymns. He studied divinity at Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities (1854–7), and after the first of many continental trips was licensed a preacher by the presbytery of Dumbarton on 2 Nov. 1858.
Story was assistant in St. Andrew's church, Montreal, from 12 March to 20 Nov. 1859, when he left to become assistant to his father at Rosneath. Before he reached home his father died and the patron, the Duke of Argyll, presented him to the parish into which he was inducted on 23 Feb. 1860. In general accord with Dr. Robert Lee [q. v.] he sought to systematise the form of service and to modify the old observances at the celebration of the communion. With two others he founded, on 31 Jan. 1865, the Church Service Society, which in the course of years efficiently transformed ancient usages.
