Ludwig Boltzmann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 7/19/10 10:39 AM Ludwig Boltzmann From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (February 20, 1844 – Ludwig Boltzmann September 5, 1906) was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics. He was one of the most important advocates for atomic theory when that scientific model was still highly controversial. Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Childhood and education 1.2 Academic career 1.3 Final years 2 Philosophy Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844-1906) 3 Physics 4 The Boltzmann equation Born February 20, 1844 5 The Second Law as a law of disorder Vienna, Austrian Empire 6 Energetics of evolution Died September 5, 1906 (aged 62) 7 See also Duino near Trieste, Italy (at that time 8 References Austria-Hungary) 9 Further reading Residence Austria, Germany 10 External links Nationality Austrian Fields Physicist Biography Institutions University of Graz University of Vienna University of Munich Childhood and education University of Leipzig Alma mater University of Vienna Boltzmann was born in Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire. His father, Ludwig Georg Doctoral Josef Stefan advisor Boltzmann, was a tax official. His grandfather, who Doctoral had moved to Vienna from Berlin, was a clock Paul Ehrenfest students Philipp Frank manufacturer, and Boltzmann’s mother, Katharina Gustav Herglotz Pauernfeind, was originally from Salzburg. He Franc Hočevar received his primary education from a private tutor at Ignacij Klemenčič the home of his parents. Boltzmann attended high Lise Meitner school in Linz, Upper Austria. At age 15, Boltzmann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann Page 1 of 10 Ludwig Boltzmann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 7/19/10 10:39 AM school in Linz, Upper Austria. At age 15, Boltzmann Known for Boltzmann's constant lost his father. Boltzmann equation H-theorem Boltzmann studied physics at the University of Boltzmann distribution Vienna, starting in 1863. Among his teachers were Stefan-Boltzmann law Josef Loschmidt, Joseph Stefan, Andreas von Signature Ettingshausen and Jozef Petzval. Boltzmann received his PhD degree in 1866 working under the supervision of Stefan; his dissertation was on kinetic theory of gases. In 1867 he became a Privatdozent (lecturer). After obtaining his doctorate degree, Boltzmann worked two more years as Stefan’s assistant. It was Stefan who introduced Boltzmann to Maxwell's work. Academic career In 1869, at age 25, he was appointed full Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Graz in the province of Styria. In 1869 he spent several months in Heidelberg working with Robert Bunsen and Leo Königsberger and then in 1871 he was with Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin. In 1873 Boltzmann joined the University of Vienna as Professor of Mathematics and there he stayed until 1876. In 1872, long before women were admitted to Austrian universities, he met Henriette von Aigentler, an aspiring teacher of mathematics and physics in Graz. She was refused permission to unofficially audit lectures, and Boltzmann advised her to appeal; she did, successfully. On July 17, 1876 Ludwig Boltzmann married Henriette; they had three daughters and two sons. Boltzmann went back to Graz to take up the chair of Experimental Physics. Among his students in Graz were Svante Arrhenius and Walther Nernst.[1][2] He spent 14 happy years in Graz and it was there that he Ludwig Boltzmann and co-workers in Graz, developed his statistical concept of nature. In 1885 he became 1887. (standing, from the left) Nernst, a member of the Imperial Austrian Academy of Sciences and Streintz, Arrhenius, Hiecke, (sitting, from the in 1887 he became the President of the University of Graz. He left) Aulinger, Ettingshausen, Boltzmann, was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Klemenčič, Hausmanninger Sciences in 1888. Boltzmann was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich in Bavaria, Germany in 1890. In 1893, Boltzmann succeeded his teacher Joseph Stefan as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna. Final years Boltzmann spent a great deal of effort in his final years defending his theories. He did not get along with some of his colleagues in Vienna, particularly Ernst Mach, who became a professor of philosophy and history of sciences in 1895. That same year Georg Helm and Wilhelm Ostwald presented their position on Energetics, at a meeting in Lübeck in 1895. They saw energy, and not matter, as the chief component of the universe. However, Boltzmann's position carried the day among other physicists who supported his atomic theories in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann Page 2 of 10 Ludwig Boltzmann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 7/19/10 10:39 AM However, Boltzmann's position carried the day among other physicists who supported his atomic theories in the debate [3]. Thereafter in 1900, Boltzmann went to the University of Leipzig, on the invitation of Wilhelm Ostwald. After the retirement of Mach due to bad health, Boltzmann came back to Vienna in 1902. His students included Karl Przibram, Paul Ehrenfest and Lise Meitner. In Vienna, Boltzmann not only taught physics but also lectured on philosophy. Boltzmann’s lectures on natural philosophy were very popular, and received a considerable attention at that time. His first lecture was an enormous success. Even though the largest lecture hall had been chosen for it, the people stood all the way down the staircase. Because of the great successes of Boltzmann’s philosophical lectures, the Emperor invited him for a reception at the Palace. Boltzmann was subject to rapid alternation of depressed moods with elevated, expansive or irritable moods, likely the symptoms of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He himself jestingly attributed his rapid swings in temperament to the fact that he was born during the night between Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday.[4] Meitner relates that those who were close to Boltzmann were aware of his bouts of severe depression and his suicide attempts. On October 5, 1906, while on a summer vacation in Duino, near Trieste, Boltzmann hanged himself during an attack of depression.[5] He is buried in the Viennese Zentralfriedhof; his tombstone bears the inscription . Philosophy Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases seemed to presuppose the reality of atoms and molecules, but almost all German philosophers and many scientists like Ernst Mach and the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald opposed their existence. During the 1890s Boltzmann attempted to formulate a compromise position which would allow both atomists and anti-atomists to do physics without arguing over atoms. His solution was to use Hertz's theory that atoms were "Bilder", that is, models or pictures. Atomists could think the pictures were the real atoms while the anti-atomists could think of the pictures as representing a useful but unreal model, but this did not fully satisfy either group. Furthermore, Ostwald and many defenders of "pure thermodynamics" were trying hard to refute the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics because of Boltzmann's assumptions about atoms and molecules and especially statistical interpretation of the second law. Around the turn of the century, Boltzmann's science was being threatened by another philosophical objection. Some physicists, including Mach's student, Gustav Jaumann, interpreted Hertz to mean that all electromagnetic behavior was continuous as if there were no atoms and molecules and as if all physical behavior was ultimately electromagnetic. This movement around 1900 deeply depressed Boltzmann since it could mean the end of his kinetic theory and statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. After Mach's resignation in Vienna in 1901, Boltzmann returned there and decided to become a philosopher himself to refute philosophical objections to his physics, but he soon became discouraged again. In 1904 at a physics conference in St. Louis where most physicists seemed to reject atoms and he was not even invited to the physics section but was stuck in a section called "applied mathematics," he violently attacked philosophy, especially on allegedly Darwinian grounds but actually in terms of Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics that people inherited bad philosophy from the past and that it was hard for scientists to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann Page 3 of 10 Ludwig Boltzmann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 7/19/10 10:39 AM acquired characteristics that people inherited bad philosophy from the past and that it was hard for scientists to overcome such inheritance. In 1905 Boltzmann corresponded extensively with the Austro-German philosopher Franz Brentano in hope of mastering philosophy better apparently so that he could refute its presence in science better, but he became discouraged about this approach as well. In the following year 1906 his mental condition became so bad that he had to resign his position. He committed suicide in September of that same year. Physics Boltzmann's most important scientific contributions were in kinetic theory, including the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for molecular speeds in a gas. In addition, Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics and the Boltzmann distribution over energies remain the foundations of classical statistical mechanics. They are applicable to the many phenomena that do not require quantum statistics and provide a remarkable insight