Background
His father James was professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1832 onward and his younger brother William was to become Baron Kelvin.
engineer glaciologist physicist
His father James was professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow from 1832 onward and his younger brother William was to become Baron Kelvin.
James attended Glasgow University from a young age and graduated (1839) with high honors in his late teens.
Born in Belfast, much of his youth was spent in Glasgow. In his late twenties he entered into private practice as a professional engineer with special expertise in water transport. In his early thirties, in 1855, he was appointed professor of civil engineering at Queen"s University Belfast.
He remained there until 1873, when he accepted the professorship of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Glasgow (in which post he was successor to the influential William Rankine) until he resigned with failing eyesight in 1889.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1877. He served as President of the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland from 1884 to 1886.
He died in Glasgow in 1892. James Thomson is known for his work on the improvement of water wheels, water pumps and turbines.
Also his innovations in the analysis of regelation, id est (that is), the effect of pressure on the freezing point of water, and his studies in glaciology including glacier motion, where he extended the work of James David Forbes.
He derived a simplified form of the Clapeyron equation for the solid-liquid phase boundary. He also had contributions in the realm of fluid dynamics of rivers. lieutenant is claimed that the term torque was introduced into English scientific literature by Thomson, in 1884.
Royal Society.