William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, was born in Belfast, moving to Glasgow when his father was appointed professor of mathematics at the university in 1833. Thomson was a bright student, winning prizes for classics studies as well as science and mathematics. However it was science that captured his imagination, and he used mathematical analysis to tackle some of the physical problems of the day.
The SI unit of temperature, the kelvin, was named in his honour in 1954. Over 100 years earlier Thomson had heard Joule argue for the equivalence of heat and work (‘Who were they?’, PHYSICS REVIEW Vol. 24, No. 4, p. 27). He was initially sceptical of Joule’s theory, however, he began to collaborate with Joule, and the combination of Joule’s meticulous experimental work and Thomson’s mathematical analysis helped the theory to be accepted.
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