George Johnstone Stoney (15.02.1826 — 5.07.1911) was an Irish physicist and mathematician, a member of the Irish Royal Society (1861) and its secretary for 20 years. He graduated from Trinity College in Dublin (1848). In 1848-52 he worked at the Parsonstown Observatory, in 1852 —57 he was professor at Imperial College, and in 1857 —82 its secretary.
His work concerned optics, spectroscopy, the kinetic theory of gases and atomic structure. In 1874 he put forward the idea that electricity is discrete and was the first to give a quantitative estimate of the minimum electric charge (published in 1881). In 1891 he proposed the name “electron” for the postulated elementary electric charge.