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Keith Prize
The Keith Medal was a prize awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy, for a scientific paper published in the society's scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery, either in mathematics or earth sciences. The Medal was inaugurated in 1827 as a result of a gift from Alexander Keith of Dunnottar, the first Treasurer of the Society. It was awarded quadrennially, alternately for a paper published in: Proceedings A (Mathematics) or Transactions (Earth and Environmental Sciences). The medal bears the head of John Napier of Merchiston. The medal is no longer awarded. Recipients of the Keith Gold Medal Source (1827 to 1913)Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh;19th century *1827–29: David Brewster, ''on his Discovery of Two New Immiscible Fluids in the Cavities of certain Minerals'' *1829–31: David Brewster, ''on a New Analysis of Solar Light'' *1831–33: Thomas Graham, ''on the Law of the Diffusion of Gases' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Kelvin's Keith Medal In The Hunterian Museum, Glasgow
Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are entitled to courtesy titles. The collective "Lords" can refer to a group or body of peers. Etymology According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the etymology of the word can be traced back to the Old English word ''hlāford'' which originated from ''hlāfweard'' meaning "loaf-ward" or "bread-keeper", reflecting the Germanic tribal custom of a chieftain providing food for his followers. The appellation "lord" is primarily applied to men, while for women the appellation "lady" is used. This is no longer universal: the Lord of Mann, a title previously held by the Queen of the United Kingdom, and female Lords Mayor are examples of women who are styled as "Lord". Historical usage Feudalism Under the feudal system, "lord" had a wide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William John Macquorn Rankine
William John Macquorn Rankine (; 5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mechanical engineer who also contributed to civil engineering, physics and mathematics. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on the first of the three thermodynamic laws. He developed the Rankine scale, an equivalent to the Kelvin scale of temperature, but in degrees Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. 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. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Aitken (meteorologist)
John Aitken, FRS, FRSE LLD (18 September 1839 – 14 November 1919) was a Scottish meteorologist, physicist and marine engineer. He was one of the founders of cloud physics and aerosol science, who built the first apparatus to measure the number of dust and fog particles in the atmosphere, a koniscope. Life Aitken was born at Darroch House in Falkirk on 18 September 1839, one of eight children of Henry Aitken of Darroch, a Falkirk lawyer in the firm of Russell & Aitken. John was educated at Falkirk Grammar School and studied marine engineering at Glasgow University, undertaking his engineer training with Messrs Napier & Sons, the Glasgow shipbuilder. He returned to his home town of Falkirk, where he carried out his various experiments. In 1875 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Edward Sang, James Thomson Bottomley and Allen Thomson. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1889 and was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Muir (mathematician)
Sir Thomas Muir (25 August 1844 – 21 March 1934) was a Scottish mathematician, remembered as an authority on determinants. Life He was born in Stonebyres in South Lanarkshire, and brought up in the small town of Biggar. He was educated at Wishaw Public School. At the University of Glasgow he changed his studies from classics to mathematics after advice from the future Lord Kelvin. After graduating he held positions at the University of St Andrews and the University of Glasgow. From 1874 to 1892 he taught at Glasgow High School. In 1882 he published ''Treatise on the theory of determinants''; then in 1890 he published a ''History of determinants''. In his 1882 work, Muir rediscovered an important lemma that was first proved by Cayley 35 years earlier: In Glasgow he lived at Beechcroft in the Bothwell district. In 1874 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, His proposers were William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Hugh Blackburn, Philip Kelland and Peter Guthr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Chrystal
George Chrystal FRSE FRS (8 March 1851 – 3 November 1911) was a Scottish mathematician. He is primarily know for his books on algebra and his studies of seiches (wave patterns in large inland bodies of water) which earned him a Gold Medal from the Royal Society of London that was confirmed shortly after his death. Life He was born in Old Meldrum on 8 March 1851, the son of Margaret (née Burr) and William Chrystal, a wealthy farmer and grain merchant. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and the University of Aberdeen. In 1872, he moved to study under James Clerk Maxwell at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He graduated Second Wrangler in 1875, joint with William Burnside, and was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi. He was appointed to the Regius Chair of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews in 1877, and then in 1879 to the Chair in Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. In 1911, he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his researches into the sur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin FRS FRSE LLD (; 25 March 1833 – 12 June 1885) was Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, remarkable for his versatility. Known to the world as the inventor of the cable car or telpherage, he was an electrician and cable engineer, economist, lecturer, linguist, critic, actor, dramatist and artist. His descendants include the engineer Charles Frewen Jenkin and through him the Conservative MPs Patrick, Lord Jenkin of Roding and Bernard Jenkin. Early life Background and childhood Generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his father's patrons, he was born to an old and eccentric family in a government building near Dungeness, Kent, England, his father, Captain Charles Jenkin, at that time being in the coast-guard service. His mother, Henrietta Camilla (Cora) Jenkin (born Jackson) was a published author. His mother was responsible for Fleeming's education. She took him to the south of Scotland, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matthew Forster Heddle
Matthew Forster Heddle FRSE (28 April 1828 – 19 November 1897) was a Scottish physician and amateur mineralogist active through the 19th century. Life He was born at Melsetter in Orkney, the son of Robert Heddle (1780–1842) and his wife, Henrietta Moodie. After receiving his early education at Edinburgh Academy 1837 to 1843 he moved to Merchiston Castle School. In 1845, he entered as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently studied chemistry and mineralogy at Klausthal and Freiburg. In 1851 he took his degree of MD at Edinburgh, and for about five years practised there. In the 1850s, together with Patrick Dudgeon, he undertook a survey of the Faroe Islands also collecting many minerals. This was followed by similar survey expeditions to the Shetland Islands and Orkney. They co-founded the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain in 1876. Medical work, however, possessed for him little attraction. He became an assistant to Arthur Connell, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Crum Brown
Alexander Crum Brown FRSE FRS (26 March 1838 – 28 October 1922) was a Scottish organic chemist. Alexander Crum Brown Road in Edinburgh's King's Buildings complex is named after him. Early life and education Crum Brown was born at 4 Bellevue Terrace in Edinburgh. His mother, Margaret Fisher Crum (d.1841), was the sister of the chemist Walter Crum, and his father, Rev Dr John Brown (1784-1858), was minister of Broughton Place Church in the east end of Edinburgh's New Town. His half brother was the physician and essayist John Brown. For five years he studied at the Royal High School, then for one year at Mill Hill School in London. In 1854, he entered the University of Edinburgh where he first studied Arts and then Medicine. He was gold medallist in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy and graduated with an MA in 1858. Continuing his medical studies, he received his MD in 1861. At this time he was also studying for a science degree at the University of London, and in 1862 became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism have been called the " second great unification in physics" where the first one had been realised by Isaac Newton. With the publication of "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" in 1865, Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. He proposed that light is an undulation in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. (This article accompanied an 8 December 1864 presentation by Maxwell to the Royal Society. His statement that "light and magnetism are affections of the same substance" is at page 499.) The unification of light and electrical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Guthrie Tait
Peter Guthrie Tait FRSE (28 April 1831 – 4 July 1901) was a Scottish mathematical physicist and early pioneer in thermodynamics. He is best known for the mathematical physics textbook '' Treatise on Natural Philosophy'', which he co-wrote with Lord Kelvin, and his early investigations into knot theory. His work on knot theory contributed to the eventual formation of topology as a mathematical discipline. His name is known in graph theory mainly for Tait's conjecture. He is also one of the namesakes of the Tait–Kneser theorem on osculating circles. Early life Tait was born in Dalkeith on 28 April 1831 the only son of Mary Ronaldson and John Tait, secretary to the 5th Duke of Buccleuch. He was educated at Dalkeith Grammar School then Edinburgh Academy. He studied Mathematics and Physics at the University of Edinburgh, and then went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in 1852. As a fellow and lecturer of his college he remai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Piazzi Smyth
Charles Piazzi Smyth (3 January 1819 – 21 February 1900) was an Italian-born British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan Piazzi Smyth, his pyramidological and metrological studies of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Astronomical career Charles Piazzi Smyth (pronounced ) was born in Naples, Italy, to Captain (later Admiral) William Henry Smyth and his wife Annarella. He was named Piazzi after his godfather, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, whose acquaintance his father had made at Palermo when serving in the Mediterranean. His father subsequently settled at Bedford and equipped there an observatory, at which Piazzi Smyth received his first lessons in astronomy. He was educated at Bedford School until the age of sixteen when he became an assistant to Sir Thomas Maclear at the Cape of Good Hope, where he observed Halley's comet and the Great Comet of 1843, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 182417 December 1907) was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, 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 contemporary form. He received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1883, was its president 1890–1895, and in 1892 was the first British scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. Absolute temperatures are stated in units of kelvin in his honour. While the existence of a coldest possible temperature ( absolute zero) was known prior to his work, Kelvin is known for determining its correct value as approximately −273.15 degrees Celsius or −459.67 degrees Fahrenheit. The Joule–Thomson effect is also named in his honour. He worked closely with mathematics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
