Lord Kelvin
Lord Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM GCVO PC PRS FRSEwas an Irish and Scottish mathematical physicist and engineer who was born in Belfast in 1824. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. He worked closely with mathematics professor Hugh Blackburn in his work. He also had a career...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth26 June 1824
CountryIreland
Lord Kelvin quotes about
Do not be afraid of being free thinkers! If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion.
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherialization of common sense.
...Creative Power is the only feasible answer to the origin of life from a scientific perspective.
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
Christianity without the cross is nothing. The cross was the fitting close of a life of rejection, scorn and defeat. But in no true sense have these things ceased or changed. Jesus is still He whom man despiseth, and the rejected of men. The world has never admired Jesus, for moral courage is yet needed in every one of its high places by him who would "confess" Christ. The "offense" of the cross, therefore, has led men in all ages to endeavor to be rid of it, and to deny that it is the power of God in the world.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Can you measure it? Can you express it in figures? Can you make a model of it? If not, your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.
To measure is to know.
Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter throughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and fancy women.
When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.
The fact that mathematics does such a good job of describing the Universe is a mystery that we don't understand. And a debt that we will probably never be able to repay.