William John Macquorn Rankine
1820 – 1872 · aged 52
Civil engineer (1820–1872)
- Born
- 5 Jul 1820 · Edinburgh
- Died
- 24 Dec 1872 · Glasgow
Life timeline
Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.
- 5 Jul 1820BornBorn in Edinburgh
- 1850AwardFellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- 1851AwardKeith Medal
- 1853AwardFellow of the Royal Society
- 1855 – 1872RoleRegius Professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanics
- 1857 – 1859RoleChairperson
- 1857AwardHonorary doctorate of Trinity College, Dublin
- 24 Dec 1872DiedDied in Glasgow
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Meanwhile in the world
Major world events during their lifetime (1820 – 1872).
- 1853 – 1856Crimean War
- 1857 – 1858Indian Rebellion of 1857
- 1870 – 1871Franco-Prussian War
Biography
William John Macquorn Rankine (5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on its First Law. He developed the Rankine scale, a Fahrenheit-based equivalent to the Celsius-based Kelvin scale of temperature.
Rankine developed a complete theory of the steam engine and indeed of all heat engines. His manuals of engineering science and practice were used for many decades after their publication in the 1850s and 1860s. He published several hundred papers and notes on science and engineering topics, from 1840 onwards, and his interests were extremely varied, including, in his youth, botany, music theory and number theory, and, in his mature years, most major branches of science, mathematics and engineering.
He was also a singer, pianist and cellist as well as a rifleman.
Text from the Wikipedia article W. J. M. Rankine, CC BY-SA 4.0
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