Vortex atoms

The relation between matter and ether was rendered clearer by Lord Kelvin s vortex-atom theory, which assumed that material atoms are vortex rings in the ether. The properties of electrical and magnetic systems have been included by regarding the atom as a structure of electrons, and an electron as a nucleus of permanent strain in the ether— a place at which the continuity of the medium has been broken and cemented together again without fitting the parts, so that there is a residual strain all round the place (Larmor). 

Thomson, William [Lord Kelvin]. 1867. On Vortex Atoms. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 6 (1867) 94-105. 

William Thomson [Lord Kelvin], "On Vortex Atoms," Philosophical Magazine 34 (1867) 1524. 

These speculations about the ionic, polar, or electronic nature of chemical bonding, which arose largely from solution theory, resulted mostly in static models of the chemical bond or atom structure. In contrast is another tradition, which is more closely identified with ether theory and electrodynamics. This tradition, too, may be associated with Helmholtz, especially by way of his contributions to nineteenth-century theories of a "vortex atom" that would explain chemical affinities as well as the origin of electromagnetism, radiation, and spectral lines. 

What kind of solution was expected from physicists As we have seen, many chemists, from Lavoisier on, expected that fundamental chemical problems would be accessible to mathematical solution, meaning not just precise quantification or geometrical explanation but algebraic formulation on mechanical principles. 32 For all the resentment of statements by Kelvin or Boltzmann that chemistry could be reduced to vortex atoms or the kinetics of atoms,33 many nineteenth-century chemists shared Kekule s vague presentiment... 

William Thomson [Lord Kelvin], "On Vortex Atoms," 1617 and Ludwig Boltzmann, "On the Necessity of Atomic Theories in Physics," 7374. There seemed to be less resentment among chemists of J. J. Thomson s application of the ether vortex atom to chemistry in his 1882 book. 

A. Force Lines, Vortex Atoms, Topology, and Physics... 

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