But Thomson’s consistency enabled him to apply a few basic ideas to a number of areas of study. He brought together disparate areas of physics—heat, thermodynamics, mechanics, hydrodynamics, magnetism, and electricity—and thus played a principal role in the great and final synthesis of 19th-century science, which viewed all physical change as energy-related phenomena. Thomson was also the first to suggest that there were mathematical analogies between kinds of energy. His success as a synthesizer of theories about energy places him in the same position in 19th-century physics that Sir Isaac Newton has in 17th-century physics or Albert Einstein in 20th-century physics. All of these great synthesizers prepared the ground for the next grand leap forward in science.

Early life

William Thomson was the fourth child in a family of seven. His mother died when he was six years old. His father, James Thomson, who was a textbook writer, taught mathematics, first in Belfast and later as a professor at the University of Glasgow; he taught his sons the most recent mathematics, much of which had not yet become a part of the British university curriculum. An unusually close relationship between a dominant father and a submissive son served to develop William’s extraordinary mind.

William, age 10, and his brother James, age 11, matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1834. There William was introduced to the advanced and controversial thinking of Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier when one of Thomson’s professors loaned him Fourier’s pathbreaking book The Analytical Theory of Heat, which applied abstract mathematical techniques to the study of heat flow through any solid object. Thomson’s first two published articles, which appeared when he was 16 and 17 years old, were a defense of Fourier’s work, which was then under attack by British scientists. Thomson was the first to promote the idea that Fourier’s mathematics, although applied solely to the flow of heat, could be used in the study of other forms of energy—whether fluids in motion or electricity flowing through a wire.

Thomson won many university awards at Glasgow, and at the age of 15 he won a gold medal for “An Essay on the Figure of the Earth,” in which he exhibited exceptional mathematical ability. That essay, highly original in its analysis, served as a source of scientific ideas for Thomson throughout his life. He last consulted the essay just a few months before he died at the age of 83.

Thomson entered Cambridge in 1841 and took a B.A. degree four years later with high honours. In 1845 he was given a copy of George Green’s An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism. That work and Fourier’s book were the components from which Thomson shaped his worldview and that helped him create his pioneering synthesis of the mathematical relationship between electricity and heat. After finishing at Cambridge, Thomson went to Paris, where he worked in the laboratory of the physicist and chemist Henri-Victor Regnault to gain practical experimental competence to supplement his theoretical education.

The chair of natural philosophy (later called physics) at the University of Glasgow fell vacant in 1846. Thomson’s father then mounted a carefully planned and energetic campaign to have his son named to the position, and at the age of 22 William was unanimously elected to it. Despite blandishments from Cambridge, Thomson remained at Glasgow for the rest of his career. He resigned his university chair in 1899, at the age of 75, after 53 years of a fruitful and happy association with the institution. He was making room, he said, for younger men.

Thomson’s scientific work was guided by the conviction that the various theories dealing with matter and energy were converging toward one great, unified theory. He pursued the goal of a unified theory even though he doubted that it was attainable in his lifetime or ever. The basis for Thomson’s conviction was the cumulative impression obtained from experiments showing the interrelation of forms of energy. By the middle of the 19th century it had been shown that magnetism and electricity, electromagnetism, and light were related, and Thomson had shown by mathematical analogy that there was a relationship between hydrodynamic phenomena and an electric current flowing through wires. James Prescott Joule also claimed that there was a relationship between mechanical motion and heat, and his idea became the basis for the science of thermodynamics.

In 1847, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Thomson first heard Joule’s theory about the interconvertibility of heat and motion. Joule’s theory went counter to the accepted knowledge of the time, which was that heat was an imponderable substance (caloric) and could not be, as Joule claimed, a form of motion. Thomson was open-minded enough to discuss with Joule the implications of the new theory. At the time, though he could not accept Joule’s idea, Thomson was willing to reserve judgment, especially since the relationship between heat and mechanical motion fit into his own view of the causes of force. By 1851 Thomson was able to give public recognition to Joule’s theory, along with a cautious endorsement in a major mathematical treatise, “On the Dynamical Theory of Heat.” Thomson’s essay contained his version of the second law of thermodynamics, which was a major step toward the unification of scientific theories.

Thomson’s work on electricity and magnetism also began during his student days at Cambridge. When, much later, James Clerk Maxwell decided to undertake research in magnetism and electricity, he read all of Thomson’s papers on the subject and adopted Thomson as his mentor. Maxwell—in his attempt to synthesize all that was known about the interrelationship of electricity, magnetism, and light—developed his monumental electromagnetic theory of light, probably the most significant achievement of 19th-century science. This theory had its genesis in Thomson’s work, and Maxwell readily acknowledged his debt.

Thomson’s contributions to 19th-century science were many. He advanced the ideas of Michael Faraday, Fourier, Joule, and others. Using mathematical analysis, Thomson drew generalizations from experimental results. He formulated the concept that was to be generalized into the dynamic theory of energy. He also collaborated with a number of leading scientists of the time, among them Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Hermann von Helmholtz, Peter Guthrie Tait, and Joule. With these partners, he advanced the frontiers of science in several areas, particularly hydrodynamics. Furthermore, Thomson originated the mathematical analogy between the flow of heat in solid bodies and the flow of electricity in conductors.

Thomson’s involvement in a controversy over the feasibility of laying a transatlantic cable changed the course of his professional work. His work on the project began in 1854 when Stokes, a lifelong correspondent on scientific matters, asked for a theoretical explanation of the apparent delay in an electric current passing through a long cable. In his reply, Thomson referred to his early paper “On the Uniform Motion of Heat in Homogeneous Solid Bodies, and its Connexion with the Mathematical Theory of Electricity” (1842). Thomson’s idea about the mathematical analogy between heat flow and electric current worked well in his analysis of the problem of sending telegraph messages through the planned 3,000-mile (4,800-km) cable. His equations describing the flow of heat through a solid wire proved applicable to questions about the velocity of a current in a cable.

The publication of Thomson’s reply to Stokes prompted a rebuttal by E.O.W. Whitehouse, the Atlantic Telegraph Company’s chief electrician. Whitehouse claimed that practical experience refuted Thomson’s theoretical findings, and for a time Whitehouse’s view prevailed with the directors of the company. Despite their disagreement, Thomson participated, as chief consultant, in the hazardous early cable-laying expeditions. In 1858 Thomson patented his telegraph receiver, called a mirror galvanometer, for use on the Atlantic cable. (The device, along with his later modification called the siphon recorder, came to be used on most of the worldwide network of submarine cables.) Eventually the directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company fired Whitehouse, adopted Thomson’s suggestions for the design of the cable, and decided in favour of the mirror galvanometer. Thomson was knighted in 1866 by Queen Victoria for his work.

Later life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin

After the successful laying of the transatlantic cable, Thomson became a partner in two engineering consulting firms, which played a major role in the planning and construction of submarine cables during the frenzied era of expansion that resulted in a global network of telegraph communication. Thomson became a wealthy man who could afford a 126-ton yacht and a baronial estate.

Thomson’s interests in science included not only electricity, magnetism, thermodynamics, and hydrodynamics but also geophysical questions about tides, the shape of the Earth, atmospheric electricity, thermal studies of the ground, the Earth’s rotation, and geomagnetism. He also entered the controversy over Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Thomson opposed Darwin, remaining “on the side of the angels.”

Thomson challenged the views on geologic and biological change of the early uniformitarians, including Darwin, who claimed that the Earth and its life had evolved over an incalculable number of years, during which the forces of nature always operated as at present. On the basis of thermodynamic theory and Fourier’s studies, Thomson in 1862 estimated that more than one million years ago the Sun’s heat and the temperature of the Earth must have been considerably greater and that these conditions had produced violent storms and floods and an entirely different type of vegetation. His views, published in 1868, particularly angered Darwin’s supporters. Thomas Henry Huxley replied to Thomson in the 1869 Anniversary Address of the President of the Geological Society of London. Thomson’s speculations as to the age of the Earth and the Sun were inaccurate, but he did succeed in pressing his contention that biological and geologic theory had to conform to the well-established theories of physics.

In an 1884 series of lectures at Johns Hopkins University on the state of scientific knowledge, Thomson wondered aloud about the failures of the wave theory of light to explain certain phenomena. His interest in the sea, roused aboard his yacht, the Lalla Rookh, resulted in a number of patents: a compass that was adopted by the British Admiralty; a form of analog computer for measuring tides in a harbour and for calculating tide tables for any hour, past or future; and sounding equipment. He established a company to manufacture these items and a number of electrical measuring devices. Like his father, he published a textbook, Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), a work on physics coauthored with Tait that helped shape the thinking of a generation of physicists.

Thomson was said to be entitled to more letters after his name than any other man in the Commonwealth. He received honorary degrees from universities throughout the world and was lauded by engineering societies and scientific organizations. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1851 and served as its president from 1890 to 1895. He published more than 600 papers and was granted dozens of patents. He died at his estate in Scotland and was buried in Westminster Abbey, London.