298 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



Bonn, where he remained for the rest of his life. When at 

 Bonn he also took part in the campaign of 1870; a wound in 

 the knee occasionally caused him trouble, but he was still 

 able at the age of fifty-six to ride as a means of exercise. He 

 died at the age of fifty-six. Just as in the case of Robert 

 Mayer, contemporaries also report of Clausius, even in his 

 schooldays, his strict love of truth, trustworthiness, straight- 

 forwardness, and devotion to duty, as particularly character- 

 istic qualities. 



William Thomson, though Scottish in origin, was born at 

 Belfast, in Ireland. His father was a teacher of mathematics 

 there; he undertook the entire education of his son up to his 

 tenth year, and in a great many directions. He was then 

 called to the university of Glasgow, where he entered his son 

 at this early age among the students. The result was satis- 

 factory; William paid particular attention to Fourier's work 

 on the conduction of heat, which is full of points of view new 

 at the time, and of mathematical art, and also to Laplace; he 

 soon also published a first small paper in connection with 

 Fourier. At the age of sixteen he then went to Cambridge 

 and later for a year to Paris, where he worked in Regnault's 

 laboratory.! Shortly after his return to Glasgow, the pro- 

 fessorship of natural philosophy became vacant, and 

 William Thomson, at that time only twenty-two years of age, 

 received the post. With very modest means, he imme- 

 diately laid out an experimental laboratory in an empty wine 

 cellar; it was not until 1870 that a new laboratory was built. 



Thomson remained faithful to Glasgow for the rest of his 

 life; together with a pleasant and stimulating degree of 

 teaching activity, he had leisure for scientific work; he was 

 able to overcome the smallness of the means at his disposal 

 by exploiting his technical inventions. Among these were 



1 Regnault, born in 1810 at Aix la Chapelle, died in 1878; was famous 

 for his exact caloriinetric measurements. 



