Lord Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, was a colossal British mathematical physicist and engineer who dominated nineteenth-century physical sciences. Entering the University of Glasgow at age ten, he was appointed to its chair of natural philosophy at twenty-two, holding it for fifty-three years. Thomson played an instrumental role in formulating the first and second laws of thermodynamics, collaborating with James Prescott Joule on the Joule-Thomson effect in refrigeration.

In 1848, Thomson proposed the absolute temperature scale, setting absolute zero at minus 273.15 degrees Celsius—the point where all thermal atomic motion ceases—which is measured today in the SI base unit named the kelvin (K). An intrepid practical inventor, Thomson personally sailed on cable-laying ships to overcome signal dispersion, patenting the mirror galvanometer and siphon recorder that made the historic 1866 transatlantic telegraph cable successful. For this monumental triumph of Victorian engineering, he was ennobled as Baron Kelvin of Largs.