Baron Kelvin of Largs, William Thomson (1824 - 1907)

Lord Kelvin was a man of many scientific successes and interests. He released meritorious publications, contrived lucrative inventions, and worked with other extraordinary scientists of his time. Thus, throughout his career, he has been beneficial to the broad field of science.

Kelvin's successes and contributions began at an early age. When Kelvin was ten, he began attending the University of Glasgow. Among many of his university awards was a gold medal from 1839 for an essay entitled "An Essay on the Figure of Earth," among many other university awards, which he would consult for ideas until a few months before his death. His first contributions to science were in the form of papers published in defense of Fourier's work, when he was only sixteen and seventeen years of age.

In 1846, Kelvin was elected professor of physics at the University of Glasgow, thanks to some lobbying on the part of his father. He would remain there until 1889. It was during this period that he published many of his over 600 papers. Five years after becoming a professor, Kelvin was honored with membership to the very prestigious Royal Society.

Kelvin's inventions numbered many. They included the mirror galvanometer, an analog tide predictor, a compass resistant to the iron hulls of ships, and the absolute temperature, or Kelvin, scale. The Kelvin scale is still in use today.

One of Lord Kelvin's gifts to mathematics was inspiring others to delve into the realm of knot theory. It was his belief that the universe was filled with an invisible and frictionless fluid called the ether. Atoms would be vortices in this fluid in the shape of knots. A table of knots, therefore, would be a table of elements. Thus, various scientists undertook the task of tabulating and theorizing over knots. When this concept of the ether and vortices died, knot theory diminished into a mere mathematical intrigue. Eventually, however, knot theory took on a new level of meaning when it appeared in the structure of DNA, and several theories for the underlying interactions between particles in quantum mechanics.

Lord Kelvin received many honors before his death. Queen Victoria knighted him in 1866. From the years 1890 to 1895, Kelvin was president of the Royal Society. In 1892, he became Baron Kelvin of Largs. A decade later, he received the Order of Merit. Lord Kelvin died on December 17, 1907, leaving the world with the spirit of his work.