Before it was accepted that atoms are made of electrons orbiting a nucleus, Sir Walter Thomson, a British scientist famously known after his lordship title 1st Baron Kelvin, noted in an 1867 paper titled “On Vortex Atoms”, the following:
“Helmhotlz’s admirable discovery of the law of vortex motion […] inevitably suggests that Helmholt’z rings are the only true atoms. Helmholtz has provided an absolutely inalterable quality in the motion of any portion of a perfect fluid in which the peculiar motion which he calls ‘Wirbelbewegung’(i.e., voriticty) has once been created. Thus any portion of a perfect fluid which has ‘Wirbelbewegung’ has one of recommendation of Lucretius’s atoms — infinitely perennial specific quality.”
Lord Kelvin by Hubert von Herkomer (more…)