Scientist Remembered throughout History - Part I
William Thomson
Have you ever wondered how hot or cold something is? Most of the time you think of temperature in degrees Fahrenheit or 
degrees Celsius, but are there any other ways temperature is measured? There is, with Kelvins. In Kelvins, 0 degrees is absolute 0, when there is no motion and no heat. With temperatures we are more familiar with, water freezes at 273 K and water boils at 373 K.
Now you might be wondering how this relates to Ireland and Irish history. The answer lies with who Kelvins are named after. They were named after Baron Kelvin, also known as William Thomson, a famous Irish engineer, mathematician, and physicist. William Thomson was born in Belfast in County Antrim, Ireland on June 26th 1824. He was the 4th child out of five and his father James Thomson is known for teaching mathematics in Belfast and at the University of Glasgow. His father was able to teach him the most recent mathematics, much of which was not yet part of the curriculum. At the age of 10, William Thomson went to the University of Glasgow in 1834 and this was the start of his career as a scientist.
At the University of Glasgow, after reading Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier's The Analytical Theory of Heat, he published his first two papers which defended Fourier's work which applied mathematics to the flow of heat. In 1841, he went to the University of Cambridge. There he was introduced to the work of George Green and his An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism. These two works are what shaped his entire view of the world and his belief that through mathematics there was one unified theory that related matter and energy. He ended up going back to the University of Glasgow in 1846 to take up the position of the chair of natural philosophy, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
In terms of his work in general, Thomson focused on the synthesis of the mathematical relationship between electricity and heat. This was based on his observation that there was interrelation between forms of energy. It had already been shown that magnetism, election, electromagnetism, and light were related while Thomson showed there was a relationship between hydrodynamic phenomena and
electric current. James Joule also recently proposed there was a relationship between mechanical motion and heat, which Thomson was able to give recognition to in 1851. Thomson, with the help of Joule's work, was able to come up with the second law of thermodynamics in 1851 as well. Not only was his own work revolutionary, many other famous scientists based their own work on his, such as James Clerk Maxwell. Overall, he was able to advance the ideas of others and formulate a dynamic theory of energy. He advanced the frontier of science, especially in hydrodynamics, and originated the mathematical analogy between the flow of heat in solid bodies and the flow of electricity in conductors.
Not only was Thomson involved in science, he also played a role in engineering. He played a controversial role in the laying of a transatlantic cable. Thomson had come up with a theoretical explanation for the delay in electric current passing through a wire but others were against his theory claiming practical experience disproved it. Even with this hiccup, Thomson worked on the project and was able to patent a telegraph receiver. He worked with other engineering consulting firms afterwards helping to expand the network of telegraph communication. So, Lord Kelvin is not just related to Kelvins. Through Thomson's work in hydrodynamics he created the Kelvin scale, but he also did so much more and is remembered even to this day.
Read about more Irish scientists, including Kathleen Longsdale, Robert Boyle, and Francis Beaufort.
Author: Annella Bellot, North Central College student