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(More customer reviews)The author has done a fine job in bringing this man, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) to life. He was one of the primary movers of the scientific world of the Victorian era, and much can be learned of the development of the physical sciences through a study of his methods, personal interactions, and achievements.
Thomson was one of the dozen or so illustrious men, almost entirely British, Scottish, German and French, who developed the central ideas of thermodynamics and electromagnetism in the middle of the 19th century. His particular contribution, among many, was to popularize and further develop the ideas of the Frenchman, Carnot, of the famous reversible heat engine. This was to lead ultimately to the discovery of the absolute temperature scale, now named for him, and to entropy. In electromagnetism, he stood between the non-mathematical insights of Faraday, and the highly mathematical formulation of Maxwell and Heaviside, which has changed little in its fundamental approach, and is still taught to sophomores today. In fact, he and a friend wrote the first recognizable classical physics textbook for undergraduates. And he played a big role as a consultant/inventor for the first transatlantic telegraph cable, a story well told here and in Gordon's recent "Thread Across the Ocean."
Thomson was something of a prodigy, gathering honors and publications at a very young age, but later in life his productivity fell off into an idosyncratic crankiness. His required approach to problems was to devise mechanical analogs for phenomena, which turned out to be too limited to arrive at a full field theory of electromagnetism and atomism, neither of which he ever accepted fully. He was a true believer in the ether, but was never able to use it to produce a fruitful alternative to Maxwell's E&M or kinetic theory.
It was interesting for me to note the obvious parallels between his life-arc and that of Einstein. Einstein was also unable to fully participate in the later scientific developments in quantum mechanics because of a prejudice or block similar to Thomson's requirement for a mechanical model. And then Kelvin spent an inordinate amount of energy in developing an improved ship's compass (a profitable success), while Einstein tried mightily (but unsuccessfully) to improve the refrigerator. Einstein killed Kelvin's ether by ignoring it, but was in turn killed by his insistence that "God doesn't play with dice."
Lindley has written a well-researched but entertaining and well written book. The illustrations are a good addition, not seen before by me. A scientist himself, he is well equipped to understand the science of the times, and is unerring and enthusiastic for his subject. Well done!
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