New games! PlayTrivia andBirthle.

PHYSICIST

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

1824 - 1907

Photo of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

Icon of person William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. He was the professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, where he undertook significant research and mathematical analysis of electricity, the formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and contributed significantly to unifying physics, which was then in its infancy of development as an emerging academic discipline. He received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1883 and served as its president from 1890 to 1895. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin has received more than 1,962,004 page views. His biography is available in 81 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 78 in 2019). William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin is the 70th most popular physicist (down from 55th in 2019), the 239th most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 187th in 2019) and the 14th most popular British Physicist.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin is most famous for his work in thermodynamics and the invention of the Kelvin scale.

Memorability Metrics

  • 2.0M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 69.64

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 81

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 6.08

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 5.38

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvins by language


Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin ranks 70 out of 717Before him are Lev Landau, Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis, Otto Stern, Robert Andrews Millikan, Emil Lenz, and Roger Penrose. After him are John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, Max von Laue, William Rowan Hamilton, Carl Zeiss, Jean Baptiste Perrin, and Lawrence Bragg.

Most Popular Physicists in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1824, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin ranks 5Before him are Bedřich Smetana, Alexandre Dumas fils, Anton Bruckner, and Gustav Kirchhoff. After him are Maria Alexandrovna, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Eugène Boudin, Paul Broca, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Marie Duplessis, and Wilkie Collins. Among people deceased in 1907, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin ranks 7Before him are Dmitri Mendeleev, Edvard Grieg, Sully Prudhomme, Klara Hitler, Oscar II of Sweden, and Henri Moissan. After him are Hector Malot, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Alfred Jarry, Robert I, Duke of Parma, Asaph Hall, and Giosuè Carducci.

Others Born in 1824

Go to all Rankings

Others Deceased in 1907

Go to all Rankings

In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin ranks 239 out of 7,765Before him are Lady Jane Grey (1537), Peter O'Toole (1932), Lemmy (1945), Roger Penrose (1931), Harold Wilson (1916), and Edward Burnett Tylor (1832). After him are John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842), John Law (1671), Ken Loach (1936), Alexander Selkirk (1676), Clement Attlee (1883), and James George Frazer (1854).

Among PHYSICISTS In United Kingdom

Among physicists born in United Kingdom, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin ranks 14Before him are Paul Dirac (1902), J. J. Thomson (1856), Thomas Young (1773), James Chadwick (1891), Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869), and Roger Penrose (1931). After him are John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842), Owen Willans Richardson (1879), Peter Higgs (1929), William Henry Bragg (1862), Henry Moseley (1887), and Edward Victor Appleton (1892).