James Prescott Joule
1818 – 1889 · aged 71
English physicist and brewer (1818–1889)
- Born
- 24 Dec 1818 · Salford
- Died
- 11 Oct 1889 · Sale
Life timeline
Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.
- 24 Dec 1818BornBorn in Salford
- 1846 – 1849RoleSecretary
- 1852AwardRoyal Medal
- 1860 – 1862RolePresident
- 1868 – 1870RolePresident
- 1870AwardCopley Medal
- 1872 – 1874RolePresident
- 1878 – 1880RolePresident
- 1880AwardAlbert Medal
- 11 Oct 1889DiedDied in Sale
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Meanwhile in the world
Major world events during their lifetime (1818 – 1889).
- 1853 – 1856Crimean War
- 1857 – 1858Indian Rebellion of 1857
- 1870 – 1871Franco-Prussian War
Biography
James Prescott Joule (24 December 1818 – 11 October 1889) was an English physicist. Joule studied the nature of heat and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, which in turn led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI unit of energy, the joule (J), is named after him.
He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale, which came to be called the Kelvin scale. Joule also made observations of magnetostriction, and he found the relationship between the current through a resistor and the heat dissipated, which is also called Joule's first law. His experiments about energy transformations were first published in 1843.
Text from the Wikipedia article James Prescott Joule, CC BY-SA 4.0
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