I am William Thomson but I am known as 1st Baron Kelvin. I discovered the value of absolute zero (−273.15° C, 0K) in 1848. I was born on June 26th, 1824 to my father James Thomson and my mother Margaret Gardner. I lost my mother in 1830 when I was only 6 years old. 2 years later, my father was asked to be a professor of mathematics at Glasgow University so we moved there the year after that. When I was 9 years old, I could remember having frequent visits to the local doctor for heart troubles. I became very ill and felt like I was on the verge of death. That year I attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. It was one of the most prestigious elementary schools in our area. The next year I began my studies at Glasgow University. In 1840 I won the class prize in astronomy for my essay On the figure of the earth. I was inspired by Alexander Pope's Essay on Man and I wanted to understand how everything in our universe worked. In the summer of 1840s we went to Germany and the Netherlands. We were required to learn new languages due to the intense travel that we were forced through. I know German and Dutch. It helped me translate Lucian of Samosata's Dialogues of the Gods from Latin to English and I won a prize for it.
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier inspired my first major works in mathematics. His work was highly criticized so I published my work that was influenced by him to explain my work and some of his work more clearly. Immediately after that I published a 2nd P.Q.R paper. When I was on vacation with my family in Lamlash in 1841, I wrote my 3rd P.Q.R paper on the uniform motion of heat in homogeneous solid bodies and its connection with the mathematical theory of electricity. Later that year my father helped me get into Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Science wasn't the only thing I studied though. I was very active in sports, athletics, and sculling at Cambridge. I won the Colquhoun Sculls in 1843. I also loved music, literature, and art.
I believed...