James Clerk Maxwell (1831 1879), first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, made major contributions to many areas of theoretical physics and mathematics, not least his discoveries in the fields of electromagnetism and of the kinetic theory of gases, which have been regarded as laying the foundations of all modern physics. This work of 1881 was edited from Maxwell's notes by a colleague, William Garnett, and had formed the basis of his lectures. Several of the articles included in the present work were also included in his two-volume Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873), also...

In this first biography of the physicist Sir James Prescott Joule (1818 1889), his friend and collaborator Osborne Reynolds (1842 1912), Professor of Engineering at Owens College, Manchester, is keen to show how Joule, the son of a prosperous Salford brewer, was an 'ordinary' boy, enjoying regular walking trips to Snowdon, the Peaks and the Lakes; at the same time, he was greatly influenced by two years of tuition by John Dalton. His later experiments, observations and published papers are discussed and quoted at length. Reynolds stresses the influence Joule's work on heat and thermodynamics...

Sir James Prescott Joule (1818 1889) became one of the most significant physicists of the nineteenth century, although his original interest in science was as a hobby and for practical business purposes. The son of a brewer, he began studying heat while investigating how to increase the efficiency of electric motors. His discovery of the relationship between heat and energy contributed to the discovery of the conservation of energy and the first law of thermodynamics. Volume 1 of Joule's scientific papers was published in 1884. It is organised chronologically and reveals the range of Joule's...

Sir James Prescott Joule (1818 1889) became one of the most significant physicists of the nineteenth century, although his original interest in science was as a hobby and for practical business purposes. The son of a brewer, he began studying heat while investigating how to increase the efficiency of electric motors. His discovery of the relationship between heat and energy contributed to the discovery of the conservation of energy and the first law of thermodynamics. Volume 2 of his collected papers, published in 1887, contains those which he co-authored with other noted physicists, such as...

This short but distinctive paper was published in 1835 by Charles Daubeny (1795 1867), who began his career as a physician but soon found his passion to be volcanos. At this time, Daubeny held chairs in chemistry and botany at Oxford. He had made many field trips to European volcanic regions between 1819 and 1825, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822, and in 1826 published the first edition of his famous Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos, of which a later version also appears in this series. Here Daubeny describes a winter trip to the Apulia (Puglia) region in the...

William Thomson, Baron Kelvin (1824 1907), was educated at Glasgow and Cambridge. While only in his twenties, he was awarded the University of Glasgow's chair in natural philosophy, which he was to hold for over fifty years. He is best known through the Kelvin, the unit of measurement of temperature named after him in consequence of his development of an absolute scale of temperature. These volumes collect together Kelvin's lectures for a wider audience. In a convivial but never condescending style, he outlines a range of scientific subjects to audiences of his fellow scientists. The range of...

William Thomson, first Baron Kelvin (1824 1907), is best known for devising the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature and for his work on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, though throughout his 53-year career as a mathematical physicist and engineer at the University of Glasgow he investigated a wide range of scientific questions in areas ranging from geology to transatlantic telegraph cables. The extent of his work is revealed in the six volumes of his Mathematical and Physical Papers, published from 1882 until 1911, consisting of articles that appeared in scientific periodicals...

William Thomson, first Baron Kelvin (1824 1907), is best known for devising the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature and for his work on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, though throughout his 53-year career as a mathematical physicist and engineer at the University of Glasgow he investigated a wide range of scientific questions in areas ranging from geology to transatlantic telegraph cables. The extent of his work is revealed in the six volumes of his Mathematical and Physical Papers, published from 1882 until 1911, consisting of articles that appeared in scientific periodicals...

William Thomson, first Baron Kelvin (1824 1907), is best known for devising the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature and for his work on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, though throughout his 53-year career as a mathematical physicist and engineer at the University of Glasgow he investigated a wide range of scientific questions in areas ranging from geology to transatlantic telegraph cables. The extent of his work is revealed in the six volumes of his Mathematical and Physical Papers, published from 1882 until 1911, consisting of articles that appeared in scientific periodicals...

William Thomson, first Baron Kelvin (1824 1907), is best known for devising the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature and for his work on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, though throughout his 53-year career as a mathematical physicist and engineer at the University of Glasgow he investigated a wide range of scientific questions in areas ranging from geology to transatlantic telegraph cables. The extent of his work is revealed in the six volumes of his Mathematical and Physical Papers, published from 1882 until 1911, consisting of articles that appeared in scientific periodicals...