William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin was an Irish-Scottish mathematical physicist and engineer who was born in 1824. He was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University from 1846 to 1899, Dean of Faculties from 1901 to 1903, and served as Chancellor from 1904 to 1907.

Thomson was as famous for his inventions as for his academic work. He published more than 600 scientific papers during his lifetime and earned international acclaim for proposing an absolute scale of temperature now known as the Kelvin Scale and for his pioneering research in the fields of mechanical energy and heat.

Knighted in 1866, Thomson became the first scientist to be elevated to the peerage when he was created Baron Kelvin of Largs in 1892. He died at his home in Ayrshire and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 23 December 1907.