births
July 5, 1820
William John Macquorn Rankine, Scottish physicist, mathematician, and engineer (died 1872)
W. J. M. Rankine
William John Macquorn Rankine was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, to the science of thermodynamics, particularly focusing on its First Law. He developed the Rankine scale, a Fahrenheit-based equivalent to the Celsius-based Kelvin scale of temperature.