James Prescott Joule Quotes

James Prescott Joule was born in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. He was an English physicist. He studied at the University of Manchester. He studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI derived unit of energy, the joule, is named after James Joule. He worked with Lord Kelvin to develop the absolute scale of temperature, which came to be called the Kelvin scale. He also made observations of magnetostriction, and he found the relationship between the current through a resistor and the heat dissipated, which is now called Joule's first law. He received several awards include: Royal Medal in 1852, Copley Medal in 1870, and Albert Medal in 1880.