Back William John Macquorn Rankine Afrikaans ዊሊያም ጆን ራንኪን Amharic William John Macquorn Rankine AN وليم رانكين Arabic وليم رانكين ARZ William John Macquorn Rankine AST Vilyam Rankine Azerbaijani ویلیام جان مککورن رانکین AZB William Rankine BCL Уільям Джон Ранкін Byelorussian
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William John Macquorn Rankine | |
|---|---|
 William John Macquorn Rankine | |
| Born | 5 July 1820 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 24 December 1872 (aged 52) Glasgow, Scotland |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
| Known for | |
| Awards | Keith Medal (1854) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, engineering, civil engineering |
| Institutions | University of Glasgow |
William John Macquorn Rankine FRSE FRS (/ˈræŋkɪn/; 5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on its First Law. He developed the Rankine scale, a Fahrenheit-based equivalent to the Celsius-based Kelvin scale of temperature.
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.
He was also a singer, pianist and cellist as well as a rifleman.[1][2]
- ^ Williams, Gavin (6 December 2018). Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-091677-0.
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