James Thomson
1822 – 1892
Engineer brother of Lord Kelvin; named the radian and torque.
A Scottish engineer and elder brother of Lord Kelvin, Thomson coined the term 'radian' and did foundational work on the properties of matter and the behavior of fluids and ice. He named and formalized torque as an engineering quantity.
The angular-unit and torque tools here use conventions he helped fix — a reminder that the Thomson family shaped more of the vocabulary than one Kelvin could hold.
Portrait: a stylized blueprint-line rendering, not a photograph.
Contributions in the toolbox
- 1873
Coins 'radian' at Queen's College Belfast.
→ Angle Converter - 1884
Coins 'torque' for twisting effort in machinery.
→ Torque Converter