SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 25 
Lord Kelvin 
(Formerly Sir William Thompson.) 
If, a month ago, the question had been asked, ‘‘Who is the most 
eminent living physicist?’’ that distinction would unhesitatingly have 
been accorded to the subject of this sketch. Prior to 1892 he had 
achieved his great fame as a scientific investigator under the more 
familiar title of Sir William Thompson. He earned that fame by his 
successful labors in many departments of scientifie inquiry. 
Perhaps his most useful 
work consisted in reducing to 
mathematical formule the re- 
lations between heat, electric- 
ity and magnetism on the one 
hand, and the mechanical 
work these agencies are capa- 
ble of performing on the 
other. The published results 
of his laborious investigations 
in this department of science 
have been of great service in 
the mechanical arts, as precise 
data were thus furnished for 
the development of electric 
power, and its perfect control 
for practical use. 
Lord Kelvin also made re- 
markable discoveries in the 
mathematical theories of elas- 
ticity, vortex motion, ecapil- 
lary attraction, and molecular 
energy. In short, his re- 
searches, always fruitful, 
ranged through a wide domain of theoretical and practical physics. 
Born in 1824, he was educated under the eve of his father, Dr. James 
Thompson, who held the chair of mathematics in the University of Glas- 
gow, but graduated at Cambridge as second wrangler. He then spent 
but graduated at Cambridge as second wrangler. He then spent 
a year in the laboratory of the distinguished chemist and physicist, 
Regnault, at Paris, whence he returned to accept the professorship of 
natural history in the Glasgow University at the precocious age of 22. 
He was of a sturdy physique, and became an enthusiastic yachtsman 
