William john macquorn rankine biography

He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson 1st Baron Kelvin , to the science of thermodynamics. 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 s and s. He published several hundred papers and notes on science and engineering topics, from 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.

He was an enthusiastic amateur singer, pianist and cellist who composed his own humorous songs. He was born in Edinburgh and died in Glasgow, a bachelor. Rankine was initially educated at home but he later attended Ayr Academy and, very briefly, the High School of Glasgow Around the family moved to Edinburgh; in he studied at a Military and Naval Academy with the mathematician George Lees; by that year he was already highly proficient in mathematics and received, as a gift from his uncle, Newton's Principia in the original Latin.

In Rankine began to study a spectrum of scientific topics at the University of Edinburgh, including natural history under Robert Jameson and natural philosophy under James David Forbes.

William john macquorn rankine biography: William John Macquorn Rankine FRSE FRS

Under Forbes he was awarded prizes for essays on methods of physical inquiry and on the undulatory or wave theory of light. During vacations, he assisted his father who, from , was manager and, later, effective treasurer and engineer of the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway which brought coal into the growing city. He left the University of Edinburgh in without a degree which was not then unusual and, perhaps because of straitened family finances, became an apprentice to Sir John Benjamin Macneill, who was at the time surveyor to the Irish Railway Commission.