Category: Biographies

Lord Kelvin: An account of his scientific life and work

Lord Kelvin came of a stock which has helped to give to the north of Ireland its commercial and industrial supremacy over the rest of that distressful country. His ancestors were county Down agriculturists of Scottish extraction. His father was James Thomson, the well-known Gl...

Chapters

8. CHAPTER VIII

The first statement of the true dynamical theory of heat, based on the fundamental idea that the work done in a Carnot cycle is to be accounted for by an excess of the heat rece...

13. Part II, the continuation was definitely abandoned.

In the second edition many topics are more fully discussed, and the contents include a very valuable account of cycloidal motion (or oscillatory motion, as it is more usually ca...

4. CHAPTER IV

In describing Thomson's early electrical researches we shall not enter into detailed calculations, but merely explain the methods employed. The meaning of certain technical term...

10. CHAPTER IX

Thomson devoted great attention from time to time to the science of hydrodynamics. This is perhaps the most abstruse subject in the domain of applied mathematics, and when visco...

20. CHAPTER XVII

It remains to say something of Lord Kelvin's public and practical activities. All over the world he came ultimately to be recognised as the greatest living scientific authority...

6. CHAPTER VI

During his residence at Cambridge Thomson gained the friendship of George Gabriel Stokes, who had graduated as Senior Wrangler and First Smith's Prizeman in 1841. They discussed...

19. CHAPTER XVI

It is impossible to convey to those who never studied at Glasgow any clear conception of Thomson as he appeared to students whom he met daily during the session. His appearance...

11. CHAPTER X

In December 1851 Thomson communicated an important paper to the _Philosophical Magazine_ on "The Mechanical Theory of Electrolysis," and "Applications of Mechanical Effect to th...

5. CHAPTER V

The incumbent of the Chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, Professor Meikleham, had been in failing health for several years, and from 1842 to 1845 his dutie...

14. CHAPTER XII

From his student days throughout his life, Lord Kelvin took a keen interest in geological questions. He was always an active member of the Geological Society of Glasgow, and was...

18. CHAPTER XV

When the question of laying an Atlantic cable began to be debated in the middle of the nineteenth century, Professor Thomson undertook the discussion of the theory of signalling...

7. CHAPTER VII

The meeting of Thomson and Joule at Oxford in 1847 was fraught with important results to the theory of heat. Thomson had previously become acquainted with Carnot's essay, most p...

1. CHAPTER I

Lord Kelvin came of a stock which has helped to give to the north of Ireland its commercial and industrial supremacy over the rest of that distressful country. His ancestors wer...

17. CHAPTER XIV

The Baltimore Lectures were delivered in 1884 at Johns Hopkins University, soon after the Montreal meeting of the British Association. The subject chosen was the Wave Theory of...

2. CHAPTER II

In 1834, that is at the age of ten, William Thomson entered the University classes. Though small in stature, and youthful even for a time when mere boys were University students...

3. CHAPTER III

Thomson entered at St. Peter's College, Cambridge, in October 1841, and began the course of study then in vogue for mathematical honours. At that time, as always down almost to...

16. Chapter XI of the series of electrometers which Thomson invented for the

measurement of differences of electric potential. These all act by the evaluation in terms of ordinary dynamical units of the force urging an electrified body from a place of hi...

12. CHAPTER XI

Professor Tait was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh in 1860, and came almost immediately into frequent contact with Thomson. Both were...

15. CHAPTER XIII

When Professor Thomson began his work as a teacher in the University of Glasgow, there was, as has already been noticed, great vagueness of specification of physical quantities....

9. Part VI (_Trans. R.S._, 1875) of the investigations of the

One of the principal results was the discovery that the effect of longitudinal pull is to increase the inductive magnetisation of soft iron, and of transverse thrust to diminish...