#william thomson

On this day in 1824, highly distinguished scientist William Thomson (known as Lord Kelvin, 1st Baron Kelvin; 1824-1907) was born.

He made significant contributions across various scientific disciplines, including thermodynamics, electricity, and magnetism.

He published over 650 papers and is perhaps best known for devising the absolute temperature scale.

William Thomson was primarily raised by his father, a mathematics professor, who influenced his early education in mathematics.

Thomson excelled academically, entering the University of Glasgow at age 10 and later attending Cambridge, graduating with the highest honors.

His early work defended the controversial methods of Fourier, laying the groundwork for his future contributions to electromagnetism, and the development of the Kelvin scale.

Collaborating with notable scientists like James Joule, Thomson contributed to the second law of thermodynamics and the Joule-Thomson effect.

Thomson was honored with numerous awards and held prestigious positions, including president of the Royal Society of London.

Despite his scientific achievements, he controversially opposed Darwin's evolutionary theory based on his thermodynamic calculations.

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin – Scientist of the Day

William Thomson, a British physicist, died Dec. 17. 1907, at the age of 83.

4. To keep the focus on modern ways of thinking about these ideas, I am skipping over some very interesting history. Boltzmann's own thinking on the subject of entropy went through significant refinements during the 1870s and 1880s, during which time interactions and communications with physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, Josef Loschmidt, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Henri Poincaré, S. H. Burbury, and Ernest Zermelo were instrumental. In fact, Boltzmann initially thought he could prove that entropy would always and absolutely be nondecreasing for an isolated physical system, and not that it was merely highly unlikely for such entropy reduction to take place. But objections raised by these and other physicists subsequently led Boltzmann to emphasize the statistical/probabilistic approach to the subject, the one that is still in use today.

"In the summer of 1897 Lord Kelvin happened to pass through New York and honored me by a visit to my laboratory where I entertained him with demonstrations in support of my wireless theory. He was fairly carried away with what he saw but, nevertheless, condemned my project in emphatic terms, qualifying it as something impossible, “an illusion and a snare.” I had expected his approval and was pained and surprised. But the next day he returned and gave me a better opportunity for explanation of the advances I had made and of the true principles underlying the system I had evolved. Suddenly he remarked with evident astonishment: “Then you are not making use of Hertz waves?” “Certainly not,” I replied, “these are radiations. No energy could be economically transmitted to a distance by any such agency. In my system the process is one of true conduction which, theoretically, can be effected at the greatest distance without appreciable loss.” I can never forget the magic change that came over the illustrious philosopher the moment he freed himself from that erroneous impression. The skeptic who would not believe was suddenly transformed into the warmest of supporters. He parted from me not only thoroughly convinced of the scientific soundness of the idea but strongly exprest his confidence in its success..."

–Nikola Tesla

Transcription of Video

Stan Batson: Remember I told you about the Sydney deaf school? There will be another story about schools in Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, which were opened 30 years after the ones in Melbourne and Sydney.

Queensland

A blind and deaf school was established in Queensland in 1893. 9 blind and 7 deaf students were taught in sign language for their first 4 years. A committee decided to use a combined system which used sign language, English spelling and oralism together. A special teacher from Melbourne joined the teaching staff at the school in Queensland. His name was Tom Semmens. In 1903, the school increased to 23 pupils. 

Western Australia

A deaf school in Western Australia was different. It’s interesting to see why it was different. The school was opened in 1896 by William Thomson. He was a deaf man, and he began the school out of his home - just like Rose and Pattison. Thomson taught with the combined system but it was different from other states because he used American Sign Language (ASL), including its one-handed alphabet. You may know the sign for Perth - it comes from the letter ‘P’ in this one-handed alphabet. This one-handed ‘P’ is still used for Perth today, and that ‘P’ is also sometimes used in the British and Irish sign languages. Later, the school switched to the two-handed alphabet so it was the same as all the other schools in Australia.

Tasmania

In 1903, the Tasmanian blind school agreed to enroll deaf children. There were 75 deaf children enrolled. They followed Queensland’s combined system of sign language and English. It’s interesting to note that sign language was used exclusively only 30 years before - at the deaf schools in Melbourne and Sydney - before the committee insisted on the complicated combined method.