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
Diseases and epidemics of the 19th century and Robert Koch's discovery of micro-organisms as the cause of disease transmission. Thus throughout the majority of the 19th century, there was only the most basic, common sense understanding of the causes, amelioration and treatment of epidemic disease. The late 19th century was the beginning of widespread use of vaccines. The cholera bacterium was isolated in 1854 by Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini, and a vaccine, the first to immunize humans against a bacterial disease, was developed by Spanish physician Jaume Ferran i Clua in 1885, and by Russian-Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine in July 1892. Antibiotic drugs did not appear until