Scottish education in the nineteenth century world. His students founded practical chemistry at Aberdeen soon after. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin was appointed to the chair of natural philosophy at Glasgow aged only 22. His work included the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. By 1870 Kelvin and Rankine made Glasgow the leading centre of science and engineering education and investigation in Britain. At Edinburgh, major figures included David Brewster (1781–1868), who made contributions to the science of optics and to the development of photography. Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85) was the first professor of engineering at the university and
First law of thermodynamics statement of the first law of thermodynamics for a transfer between two otherwise isolated open systems, that fits well with the conceptually revised and rigorous statement of the law stated above. For the thermodynamic operation of adding two systems with internal energies and , to produce a new system with internal energy , one may write ; the reference states for , and should be specified accordingly, maintaining also that the internal energy of a system be proportional to its mass, so that the internal energies are extensive variables. There is a sense in which this kind of additivity expresses