William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a Scots-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer who was born in Belfast in 1824. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. He worked closely with mathematics professor Hugh Blackburn in his work. He also had a career as an electric telegraph engineer and inventor, which propelled him into the public eye
History of thermodynamics following research by Joseph Black on the latent heat of water. More quantitative studies by James Prescott Joule in 1843 onwards provided soundly reproducible phenomena, and helped to place the subject of thermodynamics on a solid footing. William Thomson, for example, was still trying to explain Joule's observations within a caloric framework as late as 1850. The utility and explanatory power of kinetic theory, however, soon started to displace caloric and it was largely obsolete by the end of the 19th century. Joseph Black and Lavoisier made important contributions in the precise measurement of heat changes using the calorimeter, a