A timeline of events related to thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and random processes. Alternative meanings: Timeline is a 1999 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton Timeline is a 2003 film based on the novel. ... Thermodynamics (from the Greek thermos meaning heat and dynamis meaning power) is a branch of physics that studies the effects of changes in temperature, pressure, and volume on physical systems at the macroscopic scale by analyzing the collective motion of their particles using statistics. ... Statistical mechanics is the application of statistics, which includes mathematical tools for dealing with large populations, to the field of mechanics, which is concerned with the motion of particles or objects when subjected to a force. ... In the mathematics of probability, a stochastic process can be thought of as a random function. ...

Ancient times

• 5th century BC - the classical elements are used to support various theories of combustion; Empedocles writes about his four-element theory of earth, water, air, and fire
• 5th century BC - Leucippus and Democritus formulate the first philosophy of atomism
• 1st century BC - Lucretius writes his epic atomistic poem De Rerum Natura

(6th century BC - 5th century BC - 4th century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) The 5th and 6th centuries BC are a period of philosophical brilliance among advanced civilizations. ... It has been suggested that Primordial Elements be merged into this article or section. ... This article is about the chemical process. ... Empedocles of Agrigentum Empedocles (c. ... (6th century BC - 5th century BC - 4th century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) The 5th and 6th centuries BC are a period of philosophical brilliance among advanced civilizations. ... This article is about the philosopher. ... Democritus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (born at Abdera in Thrace around 450 BCE; died in 370 BC). ... In natural philosophy, atomism is the theory that all the objects in the universe are composed of very small, indestructible elements. ... (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) The 1st century BC started on January 1, 100 BC and ended on December 31, 1 BC. An alternative name for this century is the last century BC. The AD/BC notation does not use a year zero. ... Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. ... Not to be confused with The Nature of Things, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television show about natural science. ...

Before 1800

• 1620 - Francis Bacon reviews a wide range of observations about heat and related phenomena, and suggests that heat is related to motion (Novum Organum, Book II, XI)
• 1669 - J.J. Becher puts forward a theory of combustion involving combustible earth (Latin terra pinguis).
• 1676-1689 - Gottfried Leibniz develops the concept of vis viva, a limited version of the conservation of energy
• 1694-1734 - Georg Ernst Stahl names Becher's combustible earth as phlogiston and develops the theory
• 1738 - Daniel Bernoulli publishes Hydrodynamics, initiating the kinetic theory
• 1761 - Joseph Black discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting
• 1702 - Guillaume Amontons introduces the concept of absolute zero, based on observations of gases
• 1772 - Black's student Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen, which he calls phlogisticated air, and together they explain the results in terms of the phlogiston theory
• 1776 - John Smeaton publishes a paper on experiments related to power, work, momentum, and kinetic energy, supporting the conservation of energy
• 1777 - Carl Wilhelm Scheele distinguishes heat transfer by thermal radiation from that by convection and conduction
• 1783 - Antoine Lavoisier discovers oxygen and develops an explanation for combustion; in his book Reflexions sur le phlogistique, he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory
• 1791 - Pierre Prévost shows that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are
• 1798 - Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson) performs measurements of the frictional heat generated in boring cannons and develops the idea that heat is a form of kinetic energy; his measurements refute caloric theory, but are imprecise enough to leave room for doubt

Events September 6 - English emigrants on the Mayflower depart from Plymouth, England for the future New England and arrive at the end of the year. ... Sir Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English astrologer, philosopher, statesman, spy, freemason and essayist. ... In physics, heat is defined as energy in transit. ... In physics, motion means a change in the position of a body with respect to time, as measured by a particular observer in a particular frame of reference. ... // Events Samuel Pepys stopped writing his diary. ... Johann Joachim Becher (1635—1682), was a German chemist, physician, scholar and adventurer. ... This article is about the chemical process. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Events January 29 - Feodor III becomes Tsar of Russia First measurement of the speed of light, by Ole Rømer Bacons Rebellion Russo-Turkish Wars commence. ... Events Louis XIV of France passed the Code Noir, allowing the full use of slaves in the French colonies. ... Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (also von Leibni(t)z) (July 1 (June 21 Old Style) 1646, Leipzig – November 14, 1716, Hanover) was a German polymath, deemed a genius in his day and since. ... Conservation of energy is possibly the most important, and certainly the most practically useful of several conservation laws in physics. ... Events February 6 - The colony Quilombo dos Palmares is destroyed. ... Events January 8 - Premiere of George Frideric Handels opera Ariodante at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. ... Georg Ernst Stahl (October 21, 1660 - May 24, 1734), was a German chemist and physician. ... The phlogiston theory is a now discredited 17th century hypothesis regarding combustion. ... Events February 4 - Court Jew Joseph Suss Oppenheimer is executed in Württenberg April 15 - Premiere in London of Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel. ... Daniel Bernoulli Daniel Bernoulli (Groningen, February 9, 1700 – Basel, March 17, 1782) was a Dutch-born mathematician who spent much of his life in Basel, Switzerland. ... Kinetic theory, or kinetic-molecular theory, or collision theory attempts to explain the macroscopic properties of gases by considering their molecular composition and motion. ... 1761 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Joseph Black Joseph Black (16 April 1728 - 10 November 1799) was a Scottish physicist and chemist. ... Frozen Waterfall in the Rhön mountains A natural, 4 tonne, block of ice on a beach in Iceland Ice can refer any of the 14 known solid phases of water. ... In physics, heat is defined as energy in transit. ... Temperature is the physical property of a system which underlies the common notions of hot and cold; the material with the higher temperature is said to be hotter. ... Events March 8 - William III died; Princess Anne Stuart becomes Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland. ... Guillaume Amontons (August 31, 1663 - October 11, 1705) was a French instrument inventor and physicist. ... Absolute zero is a fundamental lower bound on the temperature of any macroscopic system. ... A gas is one of the four main phases of matter (after solid and liquid, and followed by plasma), that subsequently appear as a solid material is subjected to increasingly higher temperatures. ... 1772 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Daniel Rutherford, (November 3, 1749 – November 15, 1819), was a Scottish chemist and physician who was most famous for the discovery of nitrogen in 1772. ... General Name, Symbol, Number nitrogen, N, 7 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 15, 2, p Appearance colorless Atomic mass 14. ... This article is about the year 1776. ... Portrait of John Smeaton, with the Eddystone Lighthouse in the background. ... In the scientific method, an experiment (Latin: ex-+-periri, of (or from) trying), is a set of actions and observations, performed in the context of solving a particular problem or question, to support or falsify a hypothesis or research concerning phenomena. ... In physics, power (symbol: P) is the amount of work done per unit of time. ... Work (abbreviated W) is the energy transferred by a force to a moving object. ... In physics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. ... Kinetic energy is energy that a body possesses as a result of its motion. ... 1777 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Carl Wilhelm Scheele Scheeles house with his pharmacy in Köping. ... Heat transfer is the study of the energy transfer via either conduction, convection, or radiation. ... Thermal radiation, or radiant heat, is electromagnetic radiation from an object that is simply caused by its temperature. ... Convection is the transfer of heat by currents within a fluid. ... Heat flow along perfectly insulated wire Heat conduction is the transmission of heat across matter. ... 1783 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 – May 8, 1794) was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. ... General Name, Symbol, Number oxygen, O, 8 Chemical series Nonmetals Group, Period, Block 16, 2, p Appearance colorless Atomic mass 15. ... The Caloric theory of heat is an early theory of thermodynamics, developed mostly during the 18th and 19th centuries, which claims that changes in temperature are due to the transfer of was an invisible, weightless fluid called caloric. The theory originally hinged on two key assumptions: 1) heat was a... 1791 (MDCCXCI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 11-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Pierre Prévost (3 March 1751 - 8 April 1839) was a Swiss philosopher and physicist. ... 1798 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Benjamin Thompson. ... Friction is the force that opposes the relative motion or tendency of such motion of two surfaces in contact. ... Boring (mechanical) is the formation of a cylindrical hole in a solid material. ... A small Civil War-era cannon on a carriage A cannon is any large tubular firearm designed to fire a heavy projectile over a considerable distance. ... Kinetic energy is energy that a body possesses as a result of its motion. ...

1800-1847

• 1804 - Sir John Leslie observes that a matte black surface radiates heat more effectively than a polished surface, suggesting the importance of black body radiation
• 1805 - William Hyde Wollaston defends the conservation of energy in On the Force of Percussion
• 1808 - John Dalton defends caloric theory in A New System of Chemistry and describes how it combines with matter, especially gases; he proposes that the heat capacity of gases varies inversely with atomic weight
• 1810 - Sir John Leslie freezes water to ice artificially
• 1813 - Peter Ewart supports the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper On the measure of moving force; the paper strongly influences Dalton and his pupil, James Joule
• 1819 - Pierre Louis Dulong and Alexis Thérèse Petit give the Dulong-Petit law for the specific heat capacity of a crystal
• 1820 - John Herapath develops some ideas in the kinetic theory of gases but mistakenly associates temperature with molecular momentum rather than kinetic energy; his work receives little attention other than from Joule
• 1822 - Joseph Fourier formally introduces the use of dimensions for physical quantities in his Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur
• 1822 - Marc Séguin writes to John Herschel supporting the conservation of energy and kinetic theory
• 1824 - Sadi Carnot analyzes the efficiency of steam engines using caloric theory; he develops the notion of a reversible process and, in postulating that no such thing exists in nature, lays the foundation for the second law of thermodynamics
• 1827 - Robert Brown discovers the Brownian motion of pollen and dye particles in water
• 1831 - Macedonio Melloni demonstrates that black body radiation can be reflected, refracted, and polarised in the same way as light
• 1834 - Émile Clapeyron popularises Carnot's work through a graphical and analytic formulation
• 1841 - Julius Robert von Mayer, an amateur scientist, writes a paper on the conservation of energy, but his lack of academic training leads to its rejection
• 1842 - Mayer makes a connection between work, heat, and the human metabolism based on his obervations of blood made while a ship's surgeon; he calculates the mechanical equivalent of heat
• 1843 - John James Waterston fully expounds the kinetic theory of gases, but is ridiculed and ignored
• 1843 - James Joule experimentally finds the mechanical equivalent of heat
• 1847 - Hermann von Helmholtz publishes a definitive statement of the conservation of energy, the first law of thermodynamics

1804 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Sir John Leslie (April 10, 1766 - November 3, 1832) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist best remembered for his research into heat Born in Largo, Fife, Leslie gave the first modern account of capillary action in 1802 and froze water using an air-pump in 1810, the first artificial production... As the temperature decreases, the peak of the black body radiation curve moves to lower intensities and longer wavelengths. ... 1805 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... William Hyde Wollaston (August 6, 1766 – December 22, 1828) was an English chemist who is famous for discovering two chemical elements and for developing a way to process platinum ore. ... 1808 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... John Dalton John Dalton (September 6, 1766 – July 27, 1844) was a British chemist and physicist, born at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth in Cumberland. ... A gas is one of the four main phases of matter (after solid and liquid, and followed by plasma), that subsequently appear as a solid material is subjected to increasingly higher temperatures. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... ... 1810 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... The word Freeze has several meanings A freeze is a particularly cold spell of weather, a snow storm or an ice storm. ... A girl in a swimming pool full of water Water (from the Old English waeter; c. ... 1813 is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Peter Ewart (May 14, 1767 - September 15, 1842) was a British engineer who was influential in developing the technologies of turbines and theories of thermodynamics. ... James Prescott Joule, FRS (December 24, 1818 – October 11, 1889) was an English physicist, born in Salford, near Manchester. ... 1819 common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Pierre Louis Dulong (February 12, 1785 - July 19, 1838) was a French physicist and chemist. ... Alexis Thérèse Petit (October 2, 1791 - June 21, 1820) was a French physicist. ... The Dulong-Petit law, found in 1819 by Pierre Louis Dulong and Alexis Thérèse Petit, states the classical expression for the specific heat capacity of a crystal due to its lattice vibrations. ... The specific heat capacity (the symbol c or s, also called specific heat or SHC) of a substance is defined as heat capacity per unit mass. ... It has been suggested that crystallization processes be merged into this article or section. ... 1820 was a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... John Herapath (May 30, 1790 - February 24, 1868) was an English physicist who gave a partial account of the kinetic theory of gases in 1820 though it was neglected by the scientific community at the time. ... In general, a molecule is the smallest particle of a pure chemical substance that still retains its composition and chemical properties. ... In physics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. ... Kinetic energy is energy that a body possesses as a result of its motion. ... 1822 (MDCCCXXII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (March 21, 1768 - May 16, 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist who is best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their application to problems of heat flow. ... 2-dimensional renderings (ie. ... 1822 (MDCCCXXII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Marc Séguin (April 20, 1786 - February 24, 1875) was a French engineer, inventor of the wire-cable suspension bridge and the tubular steam-engine boiler. ... John Herschel Sir John Frederick William Herschel (7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English mathematician and astronomer. ... 1824 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Sadi Carnot Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (June 1, 1796 - August 24, 1832) was a French mathematician and engineer who gave the first successful theoretical account of heat engines, the Carnot cycle, and laid the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics. ... A steam engine is an external combustion heat engine that makes use of the thermal energy that exists in steam, converting it to mechanical work. ... In thermodynamics, a reversible process (or reversible cycle if the process is cyclic) is a process that can be reversed by means of infinitesimal changes in some property of the system (Sears and Salinger, 1986). ... The second law of thermodynamics, in a concise form, states that the total entropy of any thermodynamically isolated system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. ... Naval Battle of Navarino by Carneray 1827 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Robert Brown (1773–1858) Robert Brown (December 21, 1773–June 10, 1858) is acknowledged as the leading British botanist to collect in Australia during the first half of the 19th century. ... An example of 1000 simulated steps of Brownian motion in two dimensions. ... SEM image of pollen grains from a variety of common plants: sunflower (Helianthus annuus), morning glory (Ipomea purpurea), hollyhock (Sildalcea malviflora), lily (Lilium auratum), primrose (Oenothera fruticosa), and castor bean (Ricinus communis). ... 1831 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Macedonio Melloni (April 11, 1798 – August 11, 1854) was an Italian physicist, notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light. ... The reflection of sunlight on water Reflection is the abrupt change in direction of a wave front at an interface between two dissimilar media so that the wave front returns into the medium from which it originated. ... The straw seems to be broken, due to refraction of light as it emerges into the air. ... This article treats polarization in electrodynamics. ... 1834 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Emile_Clapeyron Benoit Paul Émile Clapeyron (February 26, 1799 - January 28, 1864) was an French engineer and physicist, considered as one of the founders of thermodynamics. ... take you to calendar). ... Julius Robert von Mayer. ... The word amateur has at least two connotations. ... 1842 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... This article is about modern humans. ... Santorio Santorio (1561-1636) in his steelyard balance, from Ars de statica medecina, first published 1614 Metabolism (from μεταβολισμος (metabolismos)) is the biochemical modification of chemical compounds in living organisms and cells. ... Human blood smear: a - erythrocytes; b - neutrophil; c - eosinophil; d - lymphocyte. ... Conservation of energy also known as the first law of thermodynamics is possibly the most important, and certainly the most practically useful, of several conservation laws in physics. ... 1843 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... John James Waterston (1811 - June 18, 1883) was a Scottish physicist, a neglected pioneer of the kinetic theory of gases. ... 1843 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1847 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) was a German physician and physicist. ... The first law of thermodynamics, a generalized expression of the law of the conservation of energy, states: the increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy added to the system by heating, plus the amount added in the form of work done on...

1848-1899

• 1848 - William Thomson extends the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances
• 1849 - William John Macquorn Rankine calculates the correct relationship between saturated vapour pressure and temperature using his hypothesis of molecular vortices
• 1850 - Rankine uses his vortex theory to establish accurate relationships between the temperature, pressure, and density of gases, and expressions for the latent heat of evaporation of a liquid; he accurately predicts the surprising fact that the apparent specific heat of saturated steam will be negative.
• 1850 - Rudolf Clausius clarifies Carnot's statement of the Second Law; and establishes the importance of dQ/T, but does not yet name the quantity.
• 1852 - Joule and Thomson demonstrate that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the Joule-Thomson effect
• 1854 - Helmholtz puts forward the idea of the heat death of the universe
• 1854 - Rankine introduces his thermodynamic function, later identified as entropy
• 1856 - August Krönig publishes an account of the kinetic theory of gases, probably after reading Waterston's work
• 1857 - Clausius gives a modern and compelling account of the kinetic theory of gases in his On the nature of motion called heat
• 1859 - James Clerk Maxwell discovers the distribution law of molecular velocities
• 1859 - Gustav Kirchoff shows that energy emission from a black body is a function of only temperature and frequency
• 1865 - Clausius introduces the modern macroscopic concept of entropy
• 1867 - Maxwell asks whether Maxwell's demon could reverse irreversible processes
• 1870 - Clausius proves the scalar virial theorem
• 1872 - Ludwig Boltzmann states the Boltzmann equation for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space, and publishes his H-theorem
• 1874 - Thomson formally states the second law of thermodynamics.
• 1876 - Josiah Willard Gibbs publishes the first of two papers (the second appears in 1878) which discuss phase equilibria, statistical ensembles, the free energy as the driving force behind chemical reactions, and chemical thermodynamics in general.
• 1876 - Johann Loschmidt criticises Boltzmann's H theorem as being incompatible with microscopic reversibility (Loschmidt's paradox).
• 1877 - Boltzmann states the relationship between entropy and probability.
• 1879 - Jožef Stefan observes that the total radiant flux from a blackbody is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature and states the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
• 1884 - Boltzmann derives the Stefan-Boltzmann blackbody radiant flux law from thermodynamic considerations.
• 1888 - Henri-Louis Le Chatelier states that the response of a chemical system perturbed from equilbrium will be to counteract the perturbation.
• 1893 - Wilhelm Wien discovers the displacement law for a blackbody's maximum specific intensity.

1848 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... There have been a number of people named William Thomson: William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, usually known as Lord Kelvin, was a 19th century British physicist. ... 1849 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... William John Macquorn Rankine (July 2, 1820 - December 24, 1872) was a Scottish engineer and physicist. ... The saturation vapor pressure is the vapor pressure of water when air is saturated with water (having the maximum amount of water vapor that air can hold for a given temperature and pressure). ... Temperature is the physical property of a system which underlies the common notions of hot and cold; the material with the higher temperature is said to be hotter. ... 1850 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Pressure (symbol: p) is the force per unit area acting on a surface in a direction perpendicular to that surface. ... Density (symbol: ρ - Greek: rho) is a measure of mass per unit of volume. ... Latent heat describes the amount of energy in the form of heat that is required for a material to undergo a change of phase (also known as change of state). Two latent heats are typically described. ... Evaporation is the process whereby atoms or molecules in a liquid state (or solid state if the substance sublimes) gain sufficient energy to enter the gaseous state. ... A liquid will assume the shape of its container. ... The specific heat capacity (symbol c or s, also called specific heat) of a substance is defined as heat capacity per unit mass. ... In physical chemistry and in engineering, steam refers to vaporized water. ... 1850 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Rudolf Clausius - physicist and mathematician Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (January 2, 1822 – August 24, 1888), was a German physicist and mathematician. ... 1852 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... In physics, the Joule-Thomson effect, or Joule-Kelvin effect, is a process in which the temperature of a gas is decreased by letting the gas expand adiabatically. ... 1854 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... The heat death is a possible final state of the universe, in which it has reached maximum entropy. ... 1854 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... The Thermodynamic entropy S, often simply called the entropy in the context of thermodynamics, is a measure of the amount of energy in a physical system that cannot be used to do work. ... 1856 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... August Karl Krönig (1822 - 1879) was a German chemist and physicist who published an account of the kinetic theory of gases in 1856, probably after reading a paper by John James Waterston. ... 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... 1859 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematical physicist, born in Edinburgh. ... The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is a probability distribution with applications in physics and chemistry. ... 1859 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (March 12, 1824 - October 17, 1887), a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. ... As the temperature decreases, the peak of the black body radiation curve moves to lower intensities and longer wavelengths. ... 1865 (MDCCCLXV) is a common year starting on Sunday. ... Macroscopic is commonly used to describe physical objects that are measurable and observable by the naked eye. ... 1867 (MDCCCLXVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Maxwells demon is a character in an 1867 thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the second law of thermodynamics. ... 1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... In physics, the virial theorem states that the average kinetic energy of a system of particles whose motions are bounded is given by where ri and Fi are the position and force vectors on the i th particle respectively. ... 1872 (MDCCCLXXII) was a leap year starting on Monday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ... Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (February 20, 1844 – September 5, 1906) was an Austrian physicist famous for the invention of statistical mechanics. ... The Boltzmann equation describes the statistical distribution of particles in a fluid. ... In physics, a particles distribution function is a function of seven variables, , which gives the number of particles per unit volume in phase space. ... Phase space of a dynamical system with focal stability. ... In thermodynamics, the H-theorem describes the increase of entropy of an ideal gas in an irreversible process, solving the Boltzmann equation. ... 1874 (MDCCCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... The second law of thermodynamics, in a concise form, states that the total entropy of any thermodynamically isolated system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. ... 1876 (MDCCCLXXVI) is a leap year starting on Saturday. ... Josiah Willard Gibbs (February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American mathematical physicist who contributed much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics. ... 1878 (MDCCCLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... In physics, a statistical ensemble is a very large set of similar systems, considered all at once. ... The free energy is a measure of the amount of mechanical (or other) work that can be extracted from a system, and is helpful in engineering applications. ... A chemical reaction is a process that results in the interconversion of chemical substances [1]. The substance or substances initially involved in a chemical reaction are called reactants. ... Thermochemistry is the application of thermodynamics to chemistry. ... Johann Josef Loschmidt (March 15, 1821 - July 8, 1895) was an Austrian physicist and chemist. ... Loschmidts paradox states that if there is a motion of a system that leads to a steady decrease of H (increase of entropy) with time, then there is certainly another allowed state of motion of the system, found by time reversal, in which H must increase. ... 1877 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... The word probability derives from the Latin probare (to prove, or to test). ... 1879 (MDCCCLXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Joseph Stefan (Slovene Jožef Stefan) (March 24, 1835 - January 7, 1893) was a Slovene physicist, mathematician and poet. ... Stefan-Boltzmann law (also Stefans law) states that tom is a brain the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body in unit time (black-body irradiance), (or the energy flux density (radiant flux) or the emissive power), j* is directly proportional to the fourth power... 1884 (MDCCCLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1888 (MDCCCLXXXVIII) is a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. ... Henri Louis Le Chatelier (Paris, October 8, 1850 - Miribel-les-Echelles September 17, 1936) was an influential French chemist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ... 1893 (MDCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Wilhelm Wien Wilhelm Wien (January 13, 1864 – August 30, 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to compose Wiens Law, which relates the maximum emission of a blackbody to its temperature. ...

1900-1944

• 1900 - Max Planck suggests that light may be emitted in discrete frequencies, giving his law of black-body radiation
• 1905 - Albert Einstein argues that the reality of quanta would explain the photoelectric effect
• 1905 - Albert Einstein mathematically analyzes Brownian motion as a result of random molecular motion
• 1906 - Walther Nernst presents a formulation of the third law of thermodynamics
• 1907 - Albert Einstein uses quantum theory to estimate the heat capacity of an Einstein solid
• 1909 - Constantin Carathéodory develops an axiomatic system of thermodynamics
• 1910 - Albert Einstein and Marian Smoluchowski find the Einstein-Smoluchowski formula for the attenuation coefficient due to density fluctuations in a gas
• 1912 - Peter Debye gives an improved heat capacity estimate by allowing low-frequency phonons
• 1916 - Sydney Chapman and David Enskog systematically develop the kinetic theory of gases.
• 1916 - Albert Einstein considers the thermodynamics of atomic spectral lines and predicts stimulated emission
• 1919 - James Jeans discovers that the dynamical constants of motion determine the distribution function for a system of particles
• 1920 - Meghnad Saha states his ionization equation
• 1923 - Peter Debye and Erich Huckel publish a statistical treatment of the dissociation of electrolytes
• 1924 - Satyendra Nath Bose introduces Bose-Einstein statistics, in a paper translated by Einstein
• 1926 - Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac introduce Fermi-Dirac statistics for fermions
• 1927 - John von Neumann introduces the density matrix representation and establishes quantum statistical mechanics
• 1928 - J.B. Johnson discovers Johnson noise in a resistor
• 1928 - Harry Nyquist derives the fluctuation-dissipation relationship for a resistor to explain Johnson noise
• 1929 - Lars Onsager derives the Onsager reciprocal relations
• 1942 - J.L. Doob states his theorem on Gauss-Markov processes
• 1944 - Lars Onsager gives an analytic solution to the 2D Ising model including its phase transition

1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday. ... Max Planck This article is about Planck, the German physicist. ... Black body spectrum as a function of wavelength In physics, the spectral intensity of electromagnetic radiation from a black body at temperature T is given by the Plancks law of black body radiation: where: I(ν) is the amount of energy per unit time per unit surface area per unit... 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... The word quantum, pl. ... The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons from matter upon the absorption of electromagnetic radiation, such as ultraviolet radiation or x-rays. ... 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... An example of 1000 simulated steps of Brownian motion in two dimensions. ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Walther Nernst. ... The third law of thermodynamics was developed by Walther Nernst and is thus sometimes referred to as Nernsts theorem. ... 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Constantin Carathéodory (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρής) (September 13, 1873 – February 2, 1950) was a Greek mathematician of the Modern Era. ... In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. ... -1... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Marian Smoluchowski Marian Smoluchowski (Marian Ritter von Smolan Smoluchowski, 28 May 1872 in Vorderbrühl near Vienna - 5 September 1917 in Kraków) was a Polish scientist, pioneer of statistical physics and a mountaineer. ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Peter Joseph William Debye (March 24, 1884 - November 2, 1966) (born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije) was a Dutch physical chemist. ... In thermodynamics and solid state physics, the Debye model is a method of calculating the phonon contribution to the specific heat (heat capacity) in a solid. ... A phonon is a quantized mode of vibration occurring in a rigid crystal lattice, such as the atomic lattice of a solid. ... 1916 (MCMXVI) is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January-February January 1 - The Royal Army Medical Corps first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... Sydney Chapman (January 29, 1888 – June 16, 1970) was a British astronomer and geophysicist. ... David Enskog (April 22, 1884 – June 1, 1947) was a Swedish mathematical physicist. ... 1916 (MCMXVI) is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January-February January 1 - The Royal Army Medical Corps first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... In physics, atomic spectral lines are formed when an electron makes a transition from a particular energy level of an atom, to a lower energy state. ... In optics, styimulated emission is the process by which, when perturbed by a photon, matter may lose energy resulting in the creation of another photon. ... 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Sir James Hopwood Jeans (born Ormskirk, September 11, 1877, died Dorking, September 16, 1946) was a British physicist, astronomer and mathematician who was the first to propose the theory of continuous creation of matter in the universe. ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... Meghnad Saha (मेघनाथ साहा) (October 6, 1893 – February 16, 1956) was an Indian astrophysicist. ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Peter Joseph William Debye (March 24, 1884 - November 2, 1966) (born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije) was a Dutch physical chemist. ... Erich Armand Arthur Joseph Hückel (August 9, 1896 - February 16, 1980) was a German physicist and physical chemist. ... An electrolyte is a substance that dissociates into free ions when dissolved (or molten), to produce an electrically conductive medium. ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Satyendra Nath Bose on an Indian stamp Satyendra Nath Bose /sɐθ.jin. ... In statistical mechanics, Bose-Einstein statistics determines the statistical distribution of identical indistinguishable bosons over the energy states in thermal equilibrium. ... 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Enrico Fermi in the 1940s. ... Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM (IPA: [dɪræk]) (August 8, 1902 – October 20, 1984) was a British theoretical physicist and a founder of the field of quantum physics. ... Fermi-Dirac statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Fermions, named after Enrico Fermi, are particles which form totally-antisymmetric composite quantum states. ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... John von Neumann in the 1940s. ... A density matrix, or density operator, is used in quantum theory to describe the statistical state of a quantum system. ... Quantum statistical mechanics is the study of statistical ensembles of quantum mechanical systems. ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... While at Bell Telephone Laboratories, J. B. Johnson published the journal paper Thermal Agitation of Electricity in Conductors. In telecommunication or other systems, thermal noise (or Johnson noise) is the noise generated by thermal agitation of electrons in a conductor. ... Johnson-Nyquist noise (sometimes thermal noise, Johnson noise or Nyquist noise) is the noise generated by the equilibrium fluctuations of the electric current inside an electrical conductor, which happens without any applied voltage, due to the random thermal motion of the charge carriers (the electrons). ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Harry Nyquist (February 7, 1889 - April 4, 1976) was an important contributor to information theory. ... In statistical physics, the fluctuation dissipation theorem states that if a thermodynamic system responds linearly to an external perturbation, then the amount by which it responds is simply related to the fluctuation properties of the thermodynamic system. ... Johnson-Nyquist noise (sometimes thermal noise, Johnson noise or Nyquist noise) is the noise generated by the equilibrium fluctuations of the electric current inside an electrical conductor, which happens without any applied voltage, due to the random thermal motion of the charge carriers (the electrons). ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903 – October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian physical chemist, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ... In thermodynamics, the Onsager reciprocal relations express the equality of certain relations between flows and forces in thermodynamical systems out of equilibrium, but where a notion of local equilibrium exists. ... This article is about the year. ... This article is not about the Gauss-Markov theorem of mathematical statistics. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903 – October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian physical chemist, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ... The Ising model, named after the physicist Ernst Ising, is a mathematical model in statistical mechanics. ... In physics, a phase transition, (or phase change) is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase to another. ...

1945-present

• 1948 - Claude Elwood Shannon establishes information theory.
• 1957 - A.S. Kompaneets derives his Compton scattering Fokker-Planck equation.
• 1957 - Ryogo Kubo derives the first of the Green-Kubo relations for linear transport coefficients.
• 1957 - Edwin T. Jaynes gives MaxEnt interpretation of thermodynamics from information theory.
• 1972 - Jacob Bekenstein suggests that black holes have an entropy proportional to their surface area.
• 1974 - Stephen Hawking predicts that black holes will radiate particles with a black-body spectrum which can cause black hole evaporation

1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1948 calendar). ... Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001), an American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called the father of information theory, and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory. ... Information theory is the mathematical theory of data communication and storage, generally considered to have been founded in 1948 by Claude E. Shannon. ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Fokker-Planck equation (named after Adriaan Fokker and Max Planck; also known as the Kolmogorov Forward equation) describes the time evolution of the probability density function of position and velocity of a particle. ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Ryogo Kubo (February 15, 1920 - March 31, 1995; Japanese 久保 亮五 Kubo Ryōgo) was a Japanese physicist. ... Green-Kubo relations give exact mathematical expression for transport coefficients in terms of integrals of time correlation functions. ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Edwin Thompson Jaynes (July 5th, 1922 – April 30th, 1998) was Wayman Crow Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. ... In physics the MaxEnt school of thermodynamics, initiated with two papers published in the Physical Review by Edwin T. Jaynes in 1957, views statistical mechanics as an inference process: a specific application of inference techniques rooted in information theory, which relate not just to equilibrium thermodynamics, but are general to... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1972 calendar). ... Jacob David Bekenstein (born May 1, 1947), in Mexico City, has contributed to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of the connections between information and gravitation. ... This article is about the astronomical body. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1974 calendar). ... Stephen Hawking in 2005 Professor Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, (born January 8, 1942) is considered one of the worlds leading theoretical physicists. ... In physics, Hawking radiation is thermal radiation thought to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effects. ...

See also

• History of physics
• History of thermodynamics
• List of notable textbooks in statistical mechanics
• Physics
• Thermodynamics