William John Macquorn Rankine was bom at Edinburgh on the 5th July, 1820. He was the son of David Rankine (a lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade, and a younger son of Macquorn Rankine, of Drumdow, of a well-known family in the county of Ayr), and of Barbara Grahame, one of the daughters of Archibald Grahame, of Dalmarnock, a banker in Glasgow. He was educated partly at Ayr Academy, partly at the High School of Glasgow, from which he went to the University of Edinburgh; but he derived much of his instruction from his father, and, like most men who have made any real mark in science, he owed the greater part of his knowledge to his own energy and industry. In 1836 he received a gold medal for an essay on the Undulatory Theory of Light, and in 1838 he gained an extra prize for his essay on Methods of Physical Investigation. Shortly after this date he entered upon the profession of Civil Engineering, as a pupil of Sir John McNeill, under whose direction he was employed from 1839 to 1841 in various schemes for waterworks and harbour-works in the north of Ireland, and on the Dublin and Drogheda Railway.
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