Frasi di William Thomson

As a response to Major B. F. S. Baden Powell's request to join the Aeronautical Society, December 8, 1896 http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell.
Often reproduced out of context and without citation to any primary source as "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", like in The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (1984) by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, p. 236
Contesto: I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation”. I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society.

From a 1900, April 27, , Sixth Series, 2, 1–40 (1901).
Thermodynamics quotes
Contesto: The beauty and clearness of the dynamical theory, which asserts heat and light to be modes of motion, is at present obscured by two clouds. I. The first came into existence with the undulatory theory of light, and was dealt with by Fresnel and Dr. Thomas Young; it involved the question, how could the earth move through an elastic solid, such as essentially is the luminiferous ether? II. The second is the Maxwell–Boltzmann doctrine regarding the partition of energy.

As quoted in The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910), by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (2005 edition, . p. 866)

Statement of 1896, as quoted in Prodigal Genius : The Life of Nikola Tesla (2007) by James J. O'Neill

Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883), published in Lectures Vol. I, p. 73 https://archive.org/stream/popularlecturesa01kelvuoft#page/73/mode/1up|Popular

As quoted in The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910), by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (2005 edition, . p. 1093)

Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWMSAAAAIAAJ p. 179 (1882) "On the Dynamical Theory of Heat with Numerical Results Deduced from Mr Joule's Equivalent of a Thermal Unit and M. Regnault's Observations on Steam" originally from Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, March, 1851 and Philosophical Magazine iv, 1852
Thermodynamics quotes

Quoted in Life of Lord Kelvin (1910) by Silvanus Phillips Thompson

Misattributed to Kelvin since the 1980s, either without citation or stating that it was made in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900. There is no evidence that Kelvin said this, and the quote is instead a paraphrase of Albert A. Michelson, who in 1894 stated: "… it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established … An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." The attribution to Kelvin giving an address in 1900 is presumably a confusion with his “Two clouds” speech, delivered to the Royal Society in 1900 (see above), and which on the contrary pointed out areas that would subsequently see revolutions.
Misattributed
Origine: Superstring: A theory of everything? (1988) by Paul Davies and Julian Brown
Origine: Rebuilding the Matrix : Science and Faith in the 21st Century (2003) by Denis Alexander
Origine: Einstein (2007) by Walter Isaacson, page 575
Origine: The End of Science (1996), by , p. 19 https://books.google.com/books?id=S1Lmqh79dOoC&pg=PA19

Lord Kelvin’s Replies to Addresses given on the Celebration of the Jubilee of his Professorship (June 15-17, 1896). Quoted in Lord Kelvin, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow 1846-1899 (1899) by George F. Fitzgerald http://historical.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cul.math/docviewer?did=03620002

Letter to G. F. FitzGerald (1896) as quoted in A History of Vector Analysis : The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System (1994) by Michael J. Crowe, p. 120

Letter to Robert Baldwin Hayward (1892), as quoted in Energy and Empire : A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (1989) by Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise

Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 http://books.google.com/books?id=nWMSAAAAIAAJ p. 512 (1882) "On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy" originally from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for April 19, 1852, also Philosophical Magazine, Oct. 1852
Thermodynamics quotes

Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.2 http://books.google.com/books?id=kNrVAAAAMAAJ (1884) "On Mechanical Antecedents of Motion, Heat and Light" (originally published 1854, 1855)
Thermodynamics quotes

As quoted by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1910) Vol. 2 https://books.google.com/books?id=S_PPAAAAMAAJ, p. 1124
Variante: Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society.
As a response to Major B. F. S. Baden Powell's request to join the Aeronautical Society, December 8, 1896 http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell.
Often reproduced out of context and without citation to any primary source as "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible", like in The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (1984) by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, p. 236

Origine: In a letter addressed to George Stokes dated December 20, 1857, as quoted in Fluid Mechanics in the Next Century https://doi.org/10.1115/1.3101925 (1996), by Mohamed Gad-el-Hak and Mihir Sen.