Person: Thomson, James

James Thomson campaigned to reform Glasgow University. He wrote many textbooks. He was the father of Lord Kelvin.

Thomson showed his mathematical skills and interests at a young age.
However events of the time were to create a strong impression on the young Thomson which greatly affected his outlook on life.
Two years later, in 1800, Thomson attended a new school opened by a secessionist Presbyterian minister Dr Edgar to train young men for the ministry.
Thomson's first appointment was to the school department where he taught arithmetic, geography, and bookkeeping for a year before moving to the college department where he became professor of mathematics.
The second son, born in 1824, is the famous William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin.
Two years after taking up the professorship his two sons James (then twelve years old) and William (then ten years old) began their university studies at Glasgow.
These two young men turned out to be Thomson's most talented mathematics students.
Thomson arrived in Glasgow in 1832 just after a cholera epidemic had passed but it was a second cholera epidemic in 1848 which took his life.

Born 13 November 1786, Annaghmore, near Ballynahinch, Co. Down, Ireland. Died 12 January 1849, Glasgow, Scotland.

View full biography at MacTutor

Astronomy, Origin Ireland

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive