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James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule was born at Salford, England on Christmas Eve of
the year 1818. His father and his grandfather before him were brewers, and
the business, in due course, descended to Mr. Joule and his elder brother,
and by them was carried on with success till it was sold, in 1854. Mr.
Joule's grandfather came from Elton, in Derbyshire, settled near
Manchester, where he founded the business, and died at the age of
fifty-four, in 1799. His father, one of a numerous family, married a
daughter of John Prescott of Wigan. They had five children, of whom James
Prescott Joule was the second, and of whom three were sons--Benjamin, the
eldest, James, and John--and two daughters--Alice and Mary. Mr. Joule's
mother died in 1836 at the age of forty-eight; and his father, who was an
invalid for many years before his death, died at the age of seventy-four,
in the year 1858.
Young Joule was a delicate child, and was not sent to school. His early
education was commenced by his mother's half sister, and was carried on at
his father's house, Broomhill, Pendlebury, by tutors till he was about
fifteen years of age. At fifteen he commenced working in the brewery,
which, as his father's health declined, fell entirely into the hands of
his brother Benjamin and himself.
Mr. Joule obtained his first instruction in physical science from Dalton,
to whom his father sent the two brothers to learn chemistry. Dalton, one
of the most distinguished chemists of any age or country, was then
President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and lived
and received pupils in the rooms of the Society's house. Many of his most
important memoirs were communicated to the Society, whose "Transactions"
are likewise enriched by a large number of communications from his
distinguished pupil. Dalton's instruction to the two young men commenced
with arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. He then taught them natural
philosophy out of Cavallo's text-book, and afterward, but only for a short
time before his health gave way, in 1837, chemistry from his own "New
System of Chemical Philosophy." "Profound, patient, intuitive," his
teaching must have had great influence on his pupils. We find Mr. Joule
early at work on the molecular constitution of gases, following in the
footsteps of his illustrious master, whose own investigations on the
constitution of mixed gases, and on the behavior of vapors and gases under
heat, were among the most important of his day, and whose brilliant
discovery of the atomic theory revolutionized the science of chemistry and
placed him at the head of the philosophical chemists of Europe.
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