LORD KELVIN. In 1840, a precocious 16-year-old by the name of William Thomson spent his summer vacation studying an extraordinarily sophisticated mathematical c

An important component of a biography of any great scientist is that the biographer also have deep scientific knowledge. This holds true for Silvanus P. Thompso

This study of Lord Kelvin, the most famous mathematical physicist of 19th-century Britain, delivers on a speculation long entertained by historians of science t

Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this “scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book” (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) ill