William Thompson (1824-1907) was an eminent British physicist who made important contributions to thermodynamics, and was a pioneer of telegraphy.  It was he also who proposed an absolute scale of temperature (hence, its name "degrees kelvin").  When he was made a baron, he became known as Lord Kelvin.  The reference is to Popular Lectures and Addresses, Macmillan 1891, vol. I, p. 80.