Lord Kelvin (1824-1907). Caricature of the British physicist and mathematician William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin. Kelvin was co-discoverer in 1852 of the Joule-Thomson effect. In 1848, he proposed the existence of absolute zero and the use of an absolute temperature scale, which was named the Kelvin scale. In 1866 he was knighted for his work on galvanometers and signal-carrying cables used on the newly-laid Atlantic cable. He was made Baron Kelvin in 1892. He was President of the Royal Society and also appointed to the Order of Merit.