| Scottish engineer and physicist, was born at Edinburgh
on the 5th of July 1820, and completed his education in its university.
He was trained as an engineer under Sir J. B. Macneill and was appointed
at 1855 to the chair of civil engineering in Glasgow. He was a voluminous
writer on subjects directly connected with his chair, and, besides
contributing almost weekly to the, technical journals, such as the
Engineer, brought out a series of standard textbooks on Civil Engineering,
The Steam-Engine and other Prime Movers, Machinery and Mi//work, and
Applied Mechanics, which have passed through many editions, and have
contributed greatly to the advancement of the subjects with which they
deal. To these must be added his elaborate treatise on Shipbuilding,
Theoretical and Practical. These writings, however, corresponded to but
one phase of Rankines immense energy and many-sided character. He was an
enthusiastic and most useful leader of the volunteer movement from its
begin.ning, and a writer, composer and singer of humorous and patriotic
songs, some of which, as The Three Foot Rule and They never shall have
Gibraltar, became well known far beyond the circle of his acquaintance.
Rankine was the earliest of the three founders of the modern science of
Thermodynamics (qv.) on the bases laid by Sadi Carnot and J. P. Joule
respectively, and the author of the first formal treatise on the subject.
His contributions to the theories of Elasticity and of Waves rank high
among modern developments of mathematical physics, although they are mere
units among the 150 scientific papers attached to his name in the Royal
Societys Catalogue. The more important of these were collected and
reprinted in a handsome volume (Rankines Scientific Papers, London,
1881), which contains a memoir of the author by Prof. P. G. Tait. Rankine
died at Glasgow on the 24th of December 1872. |
