James Prescott Joule

Also known as J. P. Joule

English physicist and brewer (1818–1889)

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James Prescott Joule was an English physicist and brewer who lived from 1818 to 1889 and conducted pioneering experiments on the relationship between heat and energy. His work established fundamental principles about how energy transforms between different forms, which became essential to modern physics and engineering.

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Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Gender: male
Citizenship: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Place of birth: Salford
Place of death: Sale
Occupation: physicist
Position held: president
Educated at: University of Manchester
Languages spoken: English language
Award: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Notable work: thermodynamics
Student of: John Dalton
Field of work: physics
Image: SS-joule.jpg

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writing language: English language
member of: Academy of Sciences of Turin
Commons category: James Prescott Joule
date of birth: 1818-12-24
date of death: 1889-10-11
topic's main category: Category:James Prescott Joule
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
influenced by: John Dalton
name in native language: James Prescott Joule
maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Mathematics
P12749: Georg Balthasar Metzger

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Encyclopedic overview

An electric motor presented to Kelvin by James Joule in 1842. Hunterian Museum, Glasgow.

James Prescott Joule (/dʒuːl/; 24 December 1818 – 11 October 1889) was an English physicist. Joule studied the nature of heat and discovered its relationship to mechanical work. This led to the law of conservation of energy, which in turn led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The SI unit of energy, the joule (J), is named after him.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “James Prescott Joule” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.