RANKINE, raWkin, NVILLIAm JOHN MAC QUORN (1820-72). A Scotch engineer and physi cist. He was born at Edinburgh, and studied at the University of that city, where he received honors for essays in physics. He afterwards studied civil engineering and was employed on various railways in Scotland as a civil engineer. He did not in the meantime neglect his theoretical studies and communicated a number of valuable papers to different learned societies. In 1849 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in this year read his celebrated paper On a Formula for Circulating the Expansion of Liquids by Heat. He published in the Philo sophical Magazine (1851) a paper on the Cen trifugal Theory of Elasticity as Applied to Gases and. Vapors, in which this theory was elaborated. In 1853 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society and submitted to that body a paper on thermo dynamics, On the Geometrical Representation of the Expansive Action of Heat. After delivering lectures in the university at Glasgow•, lie was elected regius professor of civil engineering in that institution in 1855, succeeding Prof. Lewis Gordon. Rankine may be considered one of the founders of the science of thermodynamics (q.v.),
as with Lo•d Kelvin (then Sir William Thom son) and Clausius he put in permanent form those parts of Carnot's theory which agreed with the view then being accepted that heat and work are convertible. In applied science his work as an engineer was of a high order, and be was the first president of the Institute of Engineers in Scotland. He was also consulting engineer to the Government and corporations and was a con tribute• to the Engineer. He was the author of the following books: Manual of Applied Me chanics (1858) Manuals of the team Engine and Other Prime Morcrs (1859) ; Manual of Civil Engineering (1862) ; Manual of Machinery and Mill Work (1869): Cyclopandia of Machine and Hand Tools (1869). These have enjoyed a well deserved and widespread popularity as text-books and have passed through many editions. Ran kine was also the corresponding and general editor of Shipbuilding Theoretical and Practical (1866). His Miscellaneous and Scientific Papers were published in 1880 and contain a biographical memoir of Prof. P. G. Tait.