Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/28



was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 5th of July, 1820, He was by descent a Scot of Scots. His father, David Rankine, descended from the Rankines of Carrick, could trace his descent back to Robert the Bruce. Carrick is a hill district of Ayrshire in the southwest of Scotland, famous for its breed of dairy cattle. Before his accession to the Crown of Scotland, Robert the Bruce was Earl of Carrick. In youth Rankine's father was a lieutenant in the regular army, but later in life he became a railroad engineer and eventually Secretary of the Caledonian Railway Company. His mother was Barbara Graham, daughter of a Glasgow banker, and second cousin of Thomas Graham who is celebrated for his investigation of the diffusion of gases and liquids.

Rankine spent his first years in Ayrshire among the Carrick Hills, which he afterwards celebrated in verse, for Rankine, like Maxwell, was an amateur poet: