ABSTRACT
William Thomson was born in Belfast on 26 June 1824. He was educated at Glasgow and Cambridge Universities, and from 1846 until 1899 he was Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851, knighted in 1866, and elevated to the peerage as Lord Kelvin in 1892. William Thomson was arguably the most important scientist of the Victorian age. He was a leading figure in the creation of the area of physics concerned with heat and energy, known as thermodynamics, and was intimately involved in the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He corresponded with a range of other important scientists such as Stokes, Fitzgerald, Maxwell, Helmholtz and Joule. He died at his home near Largs in Ayrshire, Scotland on 17 December 1907.
