William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin, was one of Britain's most prominent scientists, with brilliant achievements in the fields of mathematics, physics, and engineering. The trajectory of his life proves that with passion and talent, a person can naturally gain fame and fortune. June 26, 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of Kelvin's birth, and we take a brief look back at the life of this great scientist.
Written by | Qu Lijian
June 26, 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Thomson (June 26, 1824 – December 17, 1907), the British mathematician, physicist, and engineer. He reached great heights in pure science, applied technology, personal wealth and fame.
开尔文勋爵（William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin）丨图源：wikimedia
Genius revealed: 10-year-old college student
William Thomson was born in Belfast, now the capital of Northern Ireland, and celebrated his birthday on June 25 every year since he was a child, but his official documents record his birthday as June 26. In the Victorian era (1837-1901), Thomson would sign "William Thomson" on June 25 and "Kelvin" on June 26, quipping, "Two names deserve two birthdays." ”
William Thomson's father and sister confirmed that he was born in the early hours of June 26, 1824, and that there were no errors in the official documents. William Thomson's father, James Thomson, was a mathematician and a professor at the university. James is a very hard worker, waking up at 4 a.m. every day to work.
James Thomson's unit of work is now part of Queen's University Belfast. 丨Source: Wikimedia
James pays special attention to the education of his children. One winter, a storm blew all the windows in the house, broke the chimney, and smashed a hole in the kitchen. Mr. James took out the barometer at home and told the children about meteorology.
The Thomsons had seven children, with William being the fourth. This is a family that loves to learn, and the older children take the younger children to study, and the family is happy. Unfortunately, when William was six years old, his mother died of illness.
In 1832, James was hired as a professor at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and left Ireland with his family.
William had been studying elementary mathematics in his father's classroom, and at the age of 10 he enrolled at the University of Glasgow, where his father taught. At the time, this was not an exaggeration, as the age of entry to the university was generally 14 years old, and the children who entered the university did not go directly to the university, but to take the elementary courses first.
In 1839, James took his family on a trip to continental Europe. When he arrived in Paris, James left William and one of his older brothers behind to learn French, while the rest of the family continued their travels to Sweden. While studying Mécanique Céleste by the French mathematician and physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) at the hotel, William completed an 85-page essay on the figure of the Earth, which later won a university prize.
In 1840, James brought his family to Germany, where they could devote themselves to learning German. Two days before his departure, William was shocked to read the book "Theory of Heat" by Philip Kelland (1808-1879), a professor at the English mathematician and professor at the University of Edinburgh, who said that the French mathematician and physicist Fourier's famous book "Théorie analytique de la chaleur" (The Analytical Theory of Heat) was wrong, and he took a French copy of "The Analytical Theory of Heat" with him to Germany. In Germany, he secretly studied Fourier's writings.
James found that his son William was not focused on learning German but was quite interested in science, but James did not rebuke him, but discussed the problems with his son. William thought that Kellan was wrong and Fourier was right. After carefully studying William's arguments, James decided that his son was right. William compiled his arguments into a paper and published it, the first paper officially published in his life. In 1841, he published two more papers on heat conduction.
William's mathematical talent rose to fame in Glasgow, and everyone knew that he should go to Cambridge for further study. In 1839 and 1840, William passed his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Glasgow, but he did not choose to get his degree because he feared that he would not be able to enter Cambridge.
In October 1841, at the age of 17, William enrolled in Peterhouse, Cambridge.
剑桥大学彼得学院丨图源:wikimedia
His father, James, often wrote to William, telling him that Cambridge tuition fees accounted for one-third of his income, so he should not spend money lavishly and pay attention to frugality; Be kind to others, especially not to argue with others about religious topics; Spend your mind on studying, not rowing and partying.
William wrote back to his father, promising that he would devote all his attention to studying, and also attached his own schedule, showing that he went to bed early and got up early, and arranged activities such as reading, attending classes, religious activities, and physical exercise very tightly.
Soon, however, William let himself go, joined the rowing team, started a band, hiking, skating, swimming and other activities. The content of William's letter to his father also changed mainly to asking for money. William's transformation left his father, James, heartbroken, and worried that a good boy was over.
His father's worries were unnecessary, and William's academic performance was as good as ever.
William's excellent academic performance is due to a "teaching and training" teacher, William Hopkins (1793-1866). One of the major features of the University of Cambridge is its examination-oriented education, and the Mathematics Tripos exam is famous all over the world, and many of the top exams in this exam have gone on to become science masters. Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and where there are examinations, there are education and training. Mr. Hopkins is a legend of the triangular stool teaching and training.
After rigorous training at Hopkins, William entered the triangular bench in January 1845. William's mathematical talent was well known, and expectations were high. Before the exam, Robert Leslie Ellis, a mathematician, was the examiner, and he told another examiner, Harvey Goodwin, "We are only worthy of William Thomson's pen." The results of the exam surprised many, with William finishing second. The first place, Stephen Parkinson, won the better test-taking ability, and he later became a famous teacher at Cambridge.
William Hopkins, an English geologist and mathematician, is best known for his trigonometry bench exam training. 丨Source: Wikimedia
However, in the Smith's Prize exam, which focuses more on the candidate's original research ability, about a month later, William came back and won first place by a large margin.
In 1845, William graduated from Cambridge University with a first-class degree. Not only did he have excellent grades, but he also had outstanding academic research results, publishing 12 papers.
Taking on the responsibility of science and education: returning to the University of Glasgow
Before William graduated, his father was already planning where he would go after graduation. When William Thomson entered Cambridge in 1841, William Meikleham (1771-1846), a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Glasgow, was seriously ill and unlikely to return to work, just as William's father was tasked with finding a successor to Meklem. James wants his successor to come from Cambridge and focus on teaching, but to share the values of the Scottish education system.
James has not been able to find a suitable candidate. On Christmas Day 1842, it occurred to him that his son was not the right person. With this in mind, he began to quietly guide William in his personal affairs and to refine his resume, asking him to take as many laboratory courses as possible at Cambridge, especially in astronomical instruments (which was Meklem's area of expertise).
After graduating in 1845, William followed his father's advice and went to study chemistry and physics at the University of Paris, France. During this time, he became acquainted with Victor Regnault (1810-1878), who was known for his precise measurement of the thermal properties of gases, and entered his laboratory. William cherished this job opportunity and spent all day in the laboratory learning to operate various experimental instruments. William was also able to work with many French scientists in later textbooks, such as Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774-1862), Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857), Joseph Liouville (1809-1882), Jacques Charles François Sturm, 1803-1855) and other in-depth discussions of science; In particular, Wilhelm led Wilhelm to pay attention to the study of electrical phenomena by Faraday, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806), and Siméon Poisson (1781-1840).
Faraday proposed that the interaction between electricity and magnetism is carried out through a medium similar to a fluid, and his contemporaries disagreed with this concept, generally believing that the electric and magnetic forces are acting at a distance, and William Thomson was the first to try to use mathematics to characterize Faraday's new concept, and developed a powerful method to solve the problem of static electricity - electric imagery. William's work in electromagnetism later inspired Maxwell to establish a complete theory of electromagnetism, Maxwell's equations.
James was very pleased with William, who followed his advice and had an impeccable resume; Second, I got to know many scientific experts and was able to get strong letters of recommendation.
On May 6, 1846, Professor Mecclem died. James began to manipulate his own child's succession to Meclum. On 11 September 1846, William Thomson was unanimously elected as Meckle's successor at the age of 22.
In November 1846, William officially took to the podium and began his career as a teacher. The students in his lectures are generally welcome, but there is one serious drawback: he assumes that the students are as gifted as he is, which makes the students unable to keep up.
One of the major things William set out to do was to restructure the laboratory at Geda. William saw that the laboratory at that time was full of old instruments, often hundreds of years old, and there were almost no instruments less than fifty years old. Therefore, William applied to the school for the purchase of new equipment, and the school decided that William would lead a committee to be responsible for the procurement of the experimental equipment. William worked tirelessly and overcame many difficulties, and after more than ten years of hard work, he finally built the first teaching laboratory in the whole of the United Kingdom, and William is very proud of this. Wilhelm's laboratory is used not only for teaching, but also for the serious scientific work of outstanding students.
The physics laboratory he founded at the University was later emulated by many prestigious universities in the UK.
威廉·汤姆森创建的物理教学实验室位于图中大楼丨图源：Lord Kelvin: An Account of His Scientific Life and Work
William's own scientific work was equally fruitful.
William and his Cambridge senior, the mathematician and physicist George Stokes (1819-1903), often exchanged mathematics in letters, leaving 650 letters, the famous Stokes theorem from William's letter to Stokes, so this theorem should be called "Thomson's theorem". Their letter also discusses the similarities between the theory of heat and the theory of fluids.
William Thomson's earliest achievements in thermal science came from his association with the great experimental physicist and brewer James P. Joule (1818-1889).
In 1847, the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) held an academic conference in Oxford, and William listened to Joule's academic report. Joule summed up the fine measurements he had made over the past four years and made a lot of new ideas. Joule argued that the generally accepted view at the time—that heat is a substance called "thermal matter"—was wrong, and that heat was essentially the vibration of the atoms that make up matter. Since heat is an effect of motion, there should be a certain equivalence relationship between mechanical work and heat, and Joule has experimentally determined this equivalence relationship.
Joule has talked about the phased work of this report many times, and the response has always been silent, but this time it is different, someone stood up and asked questions. The questioner was none other than William Thomson, and his question sparked a heated discussion. After the meeting, William wrote to his father that Joule's findings were very revealing, but that the conclusion must be wrong.
After careful consideration, William gradually realized that Joule was right. He and Joule discussed it in a letter and formed a lifelong friendship. Wilhelm linked Joule's work with Nicolas Carnot's (1796-1832) work on heat engines, devised a method for quantitatively calibrating temperature—known in physics as temperature scales—that did not depend on any particular substance. The resulting unit of temperature was later named after the knighthood given to William Thomson, known as Kelvin.
英国物理学家詹姆斯·普雷斯科特·焦耳（James Prescott Joule）丨图源：wikimedia
William was also one of the architects of the law of conservation of energy, introducing the concepts of "static" and "dynamic" energy – corresponding to what is now called potential energy and kinetic energy, respectively. He is also one of the founders of the second law of thermodynamics.
By the 1850s, William had established a high reputation in the field of pure science; By the end of 1854, he had published more than 80 papers, providing profound insights in a wide range of fields, including electromagnetism and thermalism. Later, in applied science, he gained an even greater reputation.
Entering the industry: cable and maritime
In 1856, American and British businessmen founded the Atlantic Telegraph Company, planning to lay a nearly 5,000-kilometer submarine cable across the Atlantic connecting Europe and North America, and William Thomson was hired as a scientific advisor. William followed the construction team to the vast sea and went to the front line to exert his wisdom. Under William's scientific decision, the submarine cable was finally laid in 1866 after four failures, and Europe and North America could communicate with each other by telegraph. This achievement was hailed by The Times as "the greatest achievement of the current Victorious Century" and knighted the 42-year-old William Thomson.
The new technology developed by William was also used to lay the transatlantic submarine cable from France to Canada. William also co-founded an engineering consulting firm, from which he made a fortune and became a monopoly.
William's work in the field of cables also provided him with rich nourishment for his scientific career, such as his interest in many geological problems.
William Thomson argues that geology and evolutionary biology are unreliable because they do not use rigorous mathematics. He was now going to use rigorous mathematics to study a geological problem—the age of the earth. William used the Fourier method, which he loved, to calculate the time it would take for the earth to cool from a molten state to its present temperature.
The question of the age of the earth was an issue that Wilhelm was interested in when he was a student at Cambridge, and he published more than 20 papers on the subject during his lifetime, more than half of which were published after the submarine cable project.
William calculated that the age of the earth was no more than 100 million years. This figure is unacceptable to evolutionists and geologists, because in such a short period of time, neither biological evolution nor geological evolution is sufficient to occur.
In 1869, biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), known as "Darwin's bulldog", commented on William's work:
"Mathematics is like a delicate flour grinder, which can grind as fine as the powder is. But, one way or another, what you get depends on what you put in, and just as the world's greatest mill can't grind wheat flour out of peas, and it's impossible to get a definitive result from a page-to-page formula from scattered data. ”
Was his mathematical theory of calculating the age of the earth wrong?
There wasn't much wrong with the math itself, but he missed one factor – radioactivity. At the beginning of the 20th century, physicists realized that radioactivity provided an internal heating mechanism for the Earth, thereby slowing down the cooling process, so the Earth was much older than William's calculations. However, William cannot be blamed for this, because the radioactive phenomenon was not discovered until he was in his 70s.
In 1870, his wife died of illness, and in order to get out of the grief, he bought a boat and prepared to go to sea to relive the years of laying cables at sea.
The boat purchased by William Thomson丨Source: Wikimedia
His interest in maritime issues led him to become interested in maritime issues, and over the next decade he wrote more than 50 papers on tides, navigation, lighthouses, bathymetry, and more. He designed the most stable compass in the world at the time, undisturbed by the metal capsule of the ship. He also devised a mechanism for predicting the tides. He devised a method of measuring the depth of the sea without stopping. Britain was a maritime empire, and the technology developed by William was crucial.
威廉·汤姆森1872年设计的潮汐预报机器丨图源：Sciene Museum Group
Glory in old age
On January 1, 1892, William Thomson was canonized as 1st Baron Kelvin and became a nobleman.
In 1896, the celebration of Kelvin's 50th anniversary was held at the University of Glasgow, which lasted for three days, with more than 2,500 guests and a congratulatory message from the Queen of England herself. Part of the celebration was a grand exhibition of all of Kelvin's inventions, medals, fellowship or fellowship certificates from more than 80 academic organizations, and more. A temporary telegraph station was set up at the venue to receive congratulatory messages from all over the world, as far away as Moscow, Toronto, Mumbai, and Tokyo.
In 1899, at the age of 75, Kelvin retired. He reluctantly resigned himself to the University and re-enrolled as a student of the University. He became both the youngest and oldest student in the history of this university.
In 1902, Kelvin became one of the first recipients of the Order of Merit in the United Kingdom.
On December 17, 1907, Kelvin died at the age of 83. On 23 December, Baron Kelvin was buried at Westminster Abbey, where his tomb was adjacent to Newton's tomb.
In 1913, a statue was erected in Kelvin's hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
西敏寺开尔文的墓碑丨图源：Westminster Abbey Library
Baron Kelvin made immortal achievements in mathematics, physics, engineering and other fields, and published 660 papers in his lifetime. He has also made great achievements in technological innovation, applying for 70 patents. He is not an ivory tower scholar, he is not shy about making money, and he has indeed achieved financial freedom.
Kelvin took all the merit, fame, fortune, and fortune, and he did not draw on the drill camp at all, but acted with passion and genius, and naturally gained everything.
Resources
- Kelvin Life, Labours, and Legacy, by Raymond Flood (Editor), Mark McCartney (Editor), Andrew Whitaker (Editor), Oxford University Press, 2008
- The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, by Thompson Silvanus Phillips, Legare Street Press, 2022
- William Thomson: king of Victorian physics, Mark McCartney, Phys. World, 2002, 15(12), 25
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Kelvin
- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Thomson/
- https://www.mit.edu/~kardar/research/seminars/knots/history/Thomson.html
Special Reminder
1. Enter the "Boutique Column" at the bottom menu of the "Huipu" WeChat official account to view a series of popular science articles on different themes.
2. "Back to Park" provides the function of searching for articles by month. Follow the official account and reply to the four-digit year + month, such as "1903", to get the article index in March 2019, and so on.
Copyright Notice: Personal forwarding is welcome, and any form of media or institutions may not be reproduced and excerpted without authorization. For reprint authorization, please contact the background in the "Huipu" WeChat public account.