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William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FRSE (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. He was the Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, where he undertook significant research and mathematical analysis of electricity, the formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and contributed significantly to unifying physics, which was then in its infancy of development as an emerging academic discipline. He received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1883, and served as its president from 1890 to 1895. In 1892, he became the first British scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. The Kelvin scale of temperature is named in his honour.
He is seen here resting on a binnacle (the stand for a marine compass) of his invention, and holding a marine azimuth mirror. Kelvin's balls have been removed or not yet put in; they are the iron balls meant to help balance out the magnetic fields around the binnacle, since a metal ship can easily pull the compass needle off of true north.Photograph credit: T. & R. Annan & Sons; restored by Adam Cuerden