 Other notable Irish physicists include Ernest Walton , winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics . With Sir John Douglas Cockcroft , he was the first to split the nucleus of the atom by artificial means and made contributions to the development of a new theory of wave equation . William Thomson , or Lord Kelvin , is the person whom the absolute temperature unit , the Kelvin , is named after . Sir Joseph Larmor , a physicist and mathematician , made innovations in the understanding of electricity , dynamics , thermodynamics and the electron theory of matter . His most influential work was Aether and Matter , a book on theoretical physics published in 1900 . 
 Other notable Irish physicists include Ernest Walton , winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics . With Sir John Douglas Cockcroft , he was the first to split the nucleus of the atom by artificial means and made contributions to the development of a new theory of wave equation . William Thomson , or Lord Kelvin , <a href='drop_aux' title='1'><mark>is</mark></a>the person whom the absolute temperature unit , the Kelvin , is named after . Sir Joseph Larmor , a physicist and mathematician , made innovations in the understanding of electricity , dynamics , thermodynamics and the electron theory of matter . His most influential work was Aether and Matter , a book on theoretical physics published in 1900 . 
Other notable Irish physicists include Ernest Walton , winner of da 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics . With Sir John Douglas Cockcroft , he was the first to split tdanucleus of the atom by artificial means and made contributions to the development of a new theory of wave equation . William Thomson , or Lord Kelvin , thdaerson whom thedasolute temperature unit , the Kelvin , is named after . Sir Joseph Larmor , a physicist and mathematician , made innovations in the understanding of electricity , dynamics , thermodynamics and the electron theory of matter . His most influential work was Aether and Matter , a book on theoretical physics published in 1900 .