''Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics'', published in March 1902, is a work of

scientific literature : ''For a broader class of literature, see Academic publishing.'' Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scie ...

Josiah Willard Gibbs Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...

which is considered to be the foundation of modern

statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic b ...

. Its full title was ''Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics, developed with especial reference to the rational foundation of thermodynamics''.

Overview

In this book, Gibbs carefully showed how the laws of

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws ...

would arise exactly from a generic classical mechanical system, if one allowed for a certain natural uncertainty about the state of that system. The themes of thermodynamic connections to statistical mechanics had been explored in the preceding decades with

Clausius Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (; 2 January 1822 – 24 August 1888) was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principl ...

Maxwell Maxwell may refer to: People * Maxwell (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** James Clerk Maxwell, mathematician and physicist * Justice Maxwell (disambiguation) * Maxwell baronets, in the Baronetage of ...

, and Boltzmann, together writing thousands of pages on this topic. One of Gibbs' aims in writing the book was to distill these results into a cohesive and simple picture. Gibbs wrote in 1892 to his colleague

Lord Rayleigh John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was an English mathematician and physicist who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. A ...

He had been working on this topic for some time, at least as early as 1884 when he produced a paper (now lost except for its abstract) on the topic of statistical mechanics. Gibbs' book simplified statistical mechanics into a treatise of 207 pages. At the same time, Gibbs fully generalized and expanded statistical mechanics into the form in which it is known today. Gibbs showed how statistical mechanics could be used even to ''extend'' thermodynamics beyond classical thermodynamics, to systems of any number of degrees of freedom (including microscopic systems) and non- extensive systems. At the time of the book's writing, the prevailing understanding of nature was purely in classical terms:

Quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

had not yet been conceived, and even basic facts taken for granted today (such as the existence of atoms) were still contested among scientists. Gibbs was careful in assuming the least about the nature of physical systems under study, and as a result the principles of statistical mechanics laid down by Gibbs have retained their accuracy (with some changes in detail but not in theme), in spite of the major upheavals of modern physics during the early 20th century.

Content

V. Kumaran wrote the following comment regarding ''Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics'':

References

External links

{{Wikisource, Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics
Freely available digitized version on the Internet Archive
1902 non-fiction books Physics textbooks 1902 in science English-language books