Philosopher
Ludwig Boltzmann
Overview
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann ( BAWLTS-mahn or BOHLTS-muhn; German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈeːduaʁt ˈbɔltsman]; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian mathematician and theoretical physicist. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics. In 1877, he provided the current definition of entropy,
S
=
k
B
ln
Ω
{\displaystyle S=k_{\rm {B}}\ln \Omega }
, where Ω is the number of microstates whose energy equals the system's energy, interpreted as a measure of the statistical disorder of a system. Max Planck named the constant kB the Boltzmann constant.
Statistical mechanics is one of the pillars of modern physics. It describes how macroscopic observations (such as temperature and pressure) are related to microscopic parameters that fluctuate around an average. It connects thermodynamic quantities (such as heat capacity) to microscopic behavior, whereas, in classical thermodynamics, the only available option would be to measure and tabulate such quantities for various materials.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Ludwig Boltzmann
Ideas Ludwig Boltzmann discusses
- Force
- Philosophical realism
- Second law of thermodynamics
- Differential equation
- Suicide
- Paradigm
- German philosophy
- Lübeck
- Mathematics
- Mathematician
- Materialism
- Molecule
- Classical mechanics
- Theoretical physics
- Momentum
- Longman
- Probability
- Physics
- Probability theory
- Quantum field theory
- Space
- Statistical mechanics
- James Clerk Maxwell
- Thermodynamics
Place in the tradition
Part of Deductive-nomological model.