George Green was an English mathematician who published work in the fields of hydrodynamics, electricity, and magnetism, but his best known for his theorem (see Green's theorem), which is the basis of potential theory.

Green took over a bakery and adjoining windmill after the death of his father, but studied mathematics in his spare time. In 1828 he wrote his most important paper, "An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism," which, though, generally overlooked at the time, is now regarded as the beginning of mathematical physics in England.