James Prescott Joule

James Prescott Joule
Born(1818-12-24)24 December 1818
Salford, Lancashire, England
Died11 October 1889(1889-10-11) (aged 70)
Sale, Cheshire, England
CitizenshipBritish
Known for
Spouse
Amelia Grimes
(m. 1847; died 1854)
Children
  • Benjamin Arthur
  • Alice Amelia
  • Henry
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
An electric motor presented to Kelvin by James Joule in 1842. Hunterian Museum, Glasgow.

James Prescott Joule FRS FRSE (/l/;[1][2][a] 24 December 1818 – 11 October 1889) was an English physicist, mathematician and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, which in turn led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI derived unit of energy, the joule, is named after him.

He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale, which came to be called the Kelvin scale. Joule also made observations of magnetostriction, and he found the relationship between the current through a resistor and the heat dissipated, which is also called Joule's first law. His experiments about energy transformations were first published in 1843.

  1. ^ Murray 1901, p. 606.
  2. ^ Allen 1943, p. 354.


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