James Prescott Joule

James Prescott Joule FRS (24 December 1818 – 11 October 1889) is an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire.

Joule studies the nature of heat, and discovers its relationship to mechanical work.

This leads to the theory of conservation of energy, which leads to the development of the first law of thermodynamics.

The SI derived unit of energy, the joule, is named after him.

He works with Lord Kelvin to develop the absolute scale of temperature, makes observations on magnetostriction, and finds the relationship between the current through resistance and the heat dissipated, now one of the two laws called Joule's law.

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