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
19th-century philosophy positivism, Marxism and philological analysis of the Bible. In the second half of the 19th century, an even more orthodox return to Kantian thought was espoused by a number of Neo-Kantian philosophers based in two main locations: the Marburg School and the Baden School. This trend of thought survived into the beginning of the next century, influencing 20th century philosophical movements such as Neopositivism and Phenomenology. One of the most famous opponents of idealism in the first half of the German 19th century was Ludwig Feuerbach, who advocated materialism and atheism. In early 19th century Britain, Jeremy Bentham and John