Lord Kelvin Statue, Glasgow

Glasgow University is one of the most interesting places to visit and in a small garden below the University Tower you will find the Lord Kelvin Statue.

The statue was erected on this site in 1913 and was the work of Archibald MacFarlane Shannan, who was commissioned to immortalise Sir William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin of Largs, in bronze.

You can see the great man sitting on his stone plinth, his head bent over a book, undoubtedly studying higher forms of mathematics or some other learned scientific work.

Sir William Thomson was born in Belfast in 1824 and his family moved to Glasgow in 1836. Sir William was a brilliant student and he finished his studies at Glasgow University, his speciality was mathematics, science and energy.

He was particularly drawn to understanding the vagaries of heat and is renowned for his determining of Absolute Zero degree temperature, now known as the Kelvin Scale.

He was involved in many scientific inventions and improvements, that although today are somewhat dated and some of them have been proved false, he was nevertheless highly respected in his time.

He is also known for his work on the mirror galvanometer, the siphon recorder which recorded the receipt of telegraph messages and the Kelvin Water Dropper – a prototype of the electrostatic generator.