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Updated: June 9, 2025
William Thomson was a youth just past his majority when he came to the aid of Joule before the British Society, and but seven years older when he formulated his own doctrine of the dissipation of energy. And Clausius and Rankine, who are usually mentioned with Thomson as the great developers of thermo-dynamics, were both far advanced with their novel studies before they were thirty.
In 1818 he married Mary Rankine, a Scotch girl from Lonerig, in the parish of Salamannan, who had emigrated to Nova Scotia after her parents' death with her brother William, the only other member of her family. Like the other pioneers of that time, they, too, were resolved to make a new home and to restore their shattered fortunes in the new world.
Rankine has held the honorary post of Consulting Engineer to the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. In 1859 he raised the Glasgow University Company of Rifle Volunteers, and served with that corps as Captain and Major for nearly five years.
His residence in Edinburgh was unrelieved by any event worthy of being recorded in his biography, if we except a project, which he brought before the authorities and zealously promoted, for obtaining a more efficient supply of water. After a two or three years' residence in Edinburgh, Mr. Rankine determined to remove to Glasgow, where a more congenial sphere appeared ready to receive him.
It was reserved for others to carry to a successful issue the scheme thus earnestly advocated by Rankine; but to him belongs the merit none the less of having urged it upon the authorities of that day.
With his ample and varied experience in the qualities and requirements of sea-going vessels, Mr. Rankine was very appropriately selected a few months ago as one of the members of the Committee on Designs for Ships of War. This, we may add, is not the only instance in which he has been entrusted by Government with a responsible and honourable commission. For a number of years Mr.
Your name, and that of Clausers, and Joule, and our distinguished friend Thomson, will ever be associated with this science, which has done much towards explaining important laws of nature." We may add that Mr. Rankine is a painstaking and conscientious teacher, and takes great care to impart to his students a correct and intelligible knowledge of their studies.
The curriculum of study imparted by Professor Rankine includes the stability of structures; the strength of materials; the principle of the actions of machines; prime movers, whether driven by animal strength, wind, or the mechanical action of heat; the principles of hydraulics; the mathematical principles of surveying and levelling; the engineering of earthwork, masonry, carpentry, structures in iron, roads, railways, bridges, and viaducts, tunnels, canals, works of drainage and water supply, river works, harbour works, and sea coast works.
After the lapse of several years, during which he no doubt improved his time and opportunities by laying the foundation of that series of text books which he produced with remarkable fecundity in a marvellously short space of time, Mr. Rankine was appointed in 1855 to the Chair of Civil Engineering and Mechanics in Glasgow University.
The specific heat of air at constant pressure has been proved by the experiments of Regnault to be 0.2378, or something less than one-fourth of that of water a result arrived at by Rankine from totally different data. The residue, or 71 per cent., remains unchanged as heat, and may be partly saved by a regenerator, or applied to other purposes for which a moderate heat is required.
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