William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin,
OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FRSE (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a British
mathematician,
mathematical physicist and
engineer born in
Belfast. He was the
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the
University of Glasgow for 53 years, where he undertook significant research and
mathematical analysis of electricity, the formulation of the first and second
laws of thermodynamics, and contributed significantly to unifying
physics, which was then in its infancy of development as an emerging academic discipline. He received the
Royal Society's
Copley Medal in 1883, and served as its
president from 1890 to 1895. In 1892, he became the first British scientist to be elevated to the
House of Lords. The
Kelvin scale of temperature is named in his honour.
He is seen here resting on a binnacle (the stand for a marine compass) of his invention, and holding a marine azimuth mirror. Kelvin's balls have been removed or not yet put in; they are the iron balls meant to help balance out the magnetic fields around the binnacle, since a metal ship can easily pull the compass needle off of true north.Photograph credit: T. & R. Annan & Sons; restored by Adam Cuerden