timeline A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale represen ...

of events in the

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

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 of th ...

Before 1800

* 1650 – Otto von Guericke builds the first

vacuum pump A vacuum pump is a device that draws gas molecules from a sealed volume in order to leave behind a partial vacuum. The job of a vacuum pump is to generate a relative vacuum within a capacity. The first vacuum pump was invented in 1650 by Otto ...

* 1660 –

Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of ...

experimentally discovers

Boyle's Law Boyle's law, also referred to as the Boyle–Mariotte law, or Mariotte's law (especially in France), is an experimental gas law that describes the relationship between pressure and volume of a confined gas. Boyle's law has been stated as: The ...

, relating the pressure and volume of a gas (published 1662) * 1665 – Robert Hooke published his book ''

Micrographia ''Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. With Observations and Inquiries Thereupon.'' is a historically significant book by Robert Hooke about his observations through various lenses. It ...

'', which contained the statement: "Heat being nothing else but a very brisk and vehement agitation of the parts of a body." * 1667 – J. J. Becher puts forward a theory of

combustion Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combus ...

involving ''combustible earth'' in his book ''Physica subterranea'' (see

Phlogiston theory The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burni ...

). * 1676–1689 –

Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathem ...

develops the concept of ''

vis viva ''Vis viva'' (from the Latin for "living force") is a historical term used for the first recorded description of what we now call kinetic energy in an early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy. Overview Proposed by Gottfried L ...

'', a limited version of the conservation of energy * 1679 –

Denis Papin Denis Papin FRS (; 22 August 1647 – 26 August 1713) was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker and of the steam engine. Early ...

designed a

steam digester The steam digester or bone digester (also known as Papin’s digester) is a high-pressure cooker invented by French physicist Denis Papin in 1679. It is a device for extracting fats from bones in a high-pressure steam environment, which also rend ...

which inspired the development of the piston-and-cylinder steam engine. * 1694–1734 –

Georg Ernst Stahl Georg Ernst Stahl (22 October 1659 – 24 May 1734) was a German chemist, physician and philosopher. He was a supporter of vitalism, and until the late 18th century his works on phlogiston were accepted as an explanation for chemical processes.K ...

names Becher's combustible earth as

phlogiston The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burni ...

and develops the theory * 1698 –

Thomas Savery Thomas Savery (; c. 1650 – 15 May 1715) was an English inventor and engineer. He invented the first commercially used steam-powered device, a steam pump which is often referred to as the "Savery engine". Savery's steam pump was a revolutiona ...

patents an early steam engine * 1702 –

Guillaume Amontons Guillaume Amontons (31 August 1663 – 11 October 1705) was a French scientific instrument inventor and physicist. He was one of the pioneers in studying the problem of friction, which is the resistance to motion when bodies make contact. He is ...

introduces the concept of absolute zero, based on observations of

gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

es * 1738 – Daniel Bernoulli publishes ''Hydrodynamica'', initiating the kinetic theory * 1749 – Émilie du Châtelet, in her French translation and commentary on Newton's '' Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'', derives the conservation of energy from the first principles of Newtonian mechanics. * 1761 –

Joseph Black Joseph Black (16 April 1728 – 6 December 1799) was a Scottish physicist and chemist, known for his discoveries of magnesium, latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. He was Professor of Anatomy and Chemistry at the University of Glas ...

discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting * 1772 – Black's student

Daniel Rutherford Daniel Rutherford (3 November 1749 – 15 December 1819) was a Scottish physician, chemist and botanist who is known for the isolation of nitrogen in 1772. Life Rutherford was born on 3 November 1749, the son of Anne Mackay and Professor John ...

discovers

nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...

, which he calls ''phlogisticated air'', and together they explain the results in terms of the

phlogiston theory The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burni ...

* 1776 –

John Smeaton John Smeaton (8 June 1724 – 28 October 1792) was a British civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton was the fi ...

publishes a paper on

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...

s related to

power Power most often refers to: * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events ** Abusive power Power may a ...

work Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** Manual labour, physical work done by humans ** House work, housework, or homemaking ** Working animal, an animal t ...

, momentum, and

kinetic energy In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acc ...

, supporting the conservation of energy * 1777 –

Carl Wilhelm Scheele Carl Wilhelm Scheele (, ; 9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish German pharmaceutical chemist. Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hyd ...

distinguishes

heat transfer Heat transfer is a discipline of thermal engineering that concerns the generation, use, conversion, and exchange of thermal energy (heat) between physical systems. Heat transfer is classified into various mechanisms, such as thermal conduction, ...

thermal radiation Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of particles in matter. Thermal radiation is generated when heat from the movement of charges in the material (electrons and protons in common forms of matter) i ...

from that by

convection Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the conve ...

and conduction * 1783 –

Antoine Lavoisier Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794),
CNRS (

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...

and develops an explanation for combustion; in his paper "Réflexions sur le phlogistique", he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory * 1784 –

Jan Ingenhousz Jan (or John) Ingenhousz or Ingen-Housz FRS (8 December 1730 – 7 September 1799) was a Dutch-born British physiologist, biologist and chemist. He is best known for discovering photosynthesis by showing that light is essential to the process ...

describes

Brownian motion Brownian motion, or pedesis (from grc, πήδησις "leaping"), is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas). This pattern of motion typically consists of random fluctuations in a particle's position insi ...

of charcoal particles on water * 1791 – Pierre Prévost shows that all bodies radiate heat, no matter how hot or cold they are * 1798 – Count Rumford (

Benjamin Thompson Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, FRS (german: Reichsgraf von Rumford; March 26, 1753August 21, 1814) was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th-century revolut ...

) publishes his paper '' An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat which is Excited by Friction'' detailing measurements of the

friction Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction: *Dry friction is a force that opposes the relative lateral motion of ...

al heat generated in boring

cannon A cannon is a large- caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder ...

s and develops the idea that heat is a form of

; his measurements are inconsistent with caloric theory, but are also sufficiently imprecise as to leave room for doubt.

1800–1847

* 1802 –

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (, , ; 6 December 1778 – 9 May 1850) was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for his discovery that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (with Alexander von Humboldt), for two laws ...

publishes

Charles's law Charles's law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated. A modern statement of Charles's law is: When the pressure on a sample of a dry gas is held constant, the Kelvin t ...

, discovered (but unpublished) by

Jacques Charles Jacques Alexandre César Charles (November 12, 1746 – April 7, 1823) was a French inventor, scientist, mathematician, and balloonist. Charles wrote almost nothing about mathematics, and most of what has been credited to him was due to mistaking ...

around 1787; this shows the dependency between temperature and volume. Gay-Lussac also formulates the law relating temperature with pressure (the pressure law, or

Gay-Lussac's law Gay-Lussac's law usually refers to Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac's law of combining volumes of gases, discovered in 1808 and published in 1809. It sometimes refers to the proportionality of the volume of a gas to its absolute temperature at constant pr ...

) * 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 William Hyde Wollaston (; 6 August 1766 – 22 December 1828) was an English chemist and physicist who is famous for discovering the chemical elements palladium and rhodium. He also developed a way to process platinum ore into malleable ingot ...

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

es; he proposes that the

heat capacity Heat capacity or thermal capacity is a physical property of matter, defined as the amount of heat to be supplied to an object to produce a unit change in its temperature. The SI unit of heat capacity is joule per kelvin (J/K). Heat capacity ...

of gases varies inversely with

atomic weight Relative atomic mass (symbol: ''A''; sometimes abbreviated RAM or r.a.m.), also known by the deprecated synonym atomic weight, is a dimensionless physical quantity defined as the ratio of the average mass of atoms of a chemical element in a giv ...

* 1810 – Sir John Leslie freezes water to ice artificially * 1813 –

Peter Ewart Peter Ewart (14 May 1767 – 15 September 1842) was a British engineer who was influential in developing the technologies of turbines and theories of thermodynamics. Biography He was son of the Church of Scotland minister of Troqueer near D ...

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 James Prescott Joule (; 24 December 1818 11 October 1889) was an English physicist, mathematician and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work (see energy). T ...

* 1819 –

Pierre Louis Dulong Pierre Louis Dulong FRS FRSE (; ; 12 February 1785 – 19 July 1838) was a French physicist and chemist. He is remembered today largely for the law of Dulong and Petit, although he was much-lauded by his contemporaries for his studies into ...

and

Alexis Thérèse Petit Alexis Thérèse Petit (; 2 October 1791, Vesoul, Haute-Saône – 21 June 1820, Paris) was a French physicist. Petit is known for his work on the efficiencies of air- and steam-engines, published in 1818 (''Mémoire sur l’emploi du principe ...

give the Dulong-Petit law for the

specific heat capacity In thermodynamics, the specific heat capacity (symbol ) of a substance is the heat capacity of a sample of the substance divided by the mass of the sample, also sometimes referred to as massic heat capacity. Informally, it is the amount of heat t ...

of a

crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macro ...

* 1820 –

John Herapath John Herapath (30 May 1790 – 24 February 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. He was the cousin of William Herapath, t ...

develops some ideas in the kinetic theory of gases but mistakenly associates temperature with molecular momentum rather than

; his work receives little attention other than from Joule * 1822 – Joseph Fourier formally introduces the use of

dimension In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coor ...

s for physical quantities in his ''Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur'' * 1822 –

Marc Seguin Marc Seguin (20 April 1786 – 24 February 1875) was a French engineer, inventor of the wire- cable suspension bridge and the multi-tubular steam-engine boiler. Early life Seguin was born in Annonay, Ardèche to Marc François Seguin, th ...

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 The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and energy interconversions. One simple statement of the law is that heat always moves from hotter objects to colder objects (or "downhill"), unles ...

, and initiating the science of thermodynamics * 1827 – Robert Brown discovers the

of pollen and dye particles in water * 1831 –

Macedonio Melloni Macedonio Melloni (11 April 1798 – 11 August 1854) was an Italian physicist, notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light. Life Born at Parma, in 1824 he was appointed professor at the local Uni ...

demonstrates that black-body radiation can be reflected,

refracted In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomeno ...

, and polarised in the same way as light * 1834 – Émile Clapeyron popularises Carnot's work through a graphical and analytic formulation. He also combined

Charles's Law Charles's law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated. A modern statement of Charles's law is: When the pressure on a sample of a dry gas is held constant, the Kelvin t ...

, and

Gay-Lussac's Law Gay-Lussac's law usually refers to Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac's law of combining volumes of gases, discovered in 1808 and published in 1809. It sometimes refers to the proportionality of the volume of a gas to its absolute temperature at constant pr ...

to produce a

Combined Gas Law The ideal gas law, also called the general gas equation, is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gas. It is a good approximation of the behavior of many gases under many conditions, although it has several limitations. It was first sta ...

. PV/T = k * 1841 –

Julius Robert von Mayer Julius Robert von Mayer (25 November 1814 – 20 March 1878) was a German physician, chemist, and physicist and one of the founders of thermodynamics. He is best known for enunciating in 1841 one of the original statements of the conservation ...

, 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 Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run c ...

based on his observations of blood made while a ship's surgeon; he calculates the

mechanical equivalent of heat In the history of science, the mechanical equivalent of heat states that motion and heat are mutually interchangeable and that in every case, a given amount of work would generate the same amount of heat, provided the work done is totally convert ...

* 1842 –

William Robert Grove Sir William Robert Grove, FRS FRSE (11 July 1811 – 1 August 1896) was a Welsh judge and physical scientist. He anticipated the general theory of the conservation of energy, and was a pioneer of fuel cell technology. He invented the Grove vo ...

demonstrates the thermal dissociation of molecules into their constituent atoms, by showing that steam can be disassociated into oxygen and hydrogen, and the process reversed * 1843 –

John James Waterston John James Waterston (1811 – 18 June 1883) was a Scotland, Scottish physicist and a neglected pioneer of the kinetic theory of gases. Early life Waterston's father, George, was an Edinburgh sealing wax manufacturer and stationer, a relative of ...

fully expounds the kinetic theory of gases, but according to D Levermore "there is no evidence that any physical scientist read the book; perhaps it was overlooked because of its misleading title, Thoughts on the Mental Functions." * 1843 –

experimentally finds the mechanical equivalent of heat * 1845 –

Henri Victor Regnault Henri Victor Regnault (21 July 1810 – 19 January 1878) was a French chemist and physicist best known for his careful measurements of the thermal properties of gases. He was an early thermodynamicist and was mentor to William Thomson in ...

added

Avogadro's Law Avogadro's law (sometimes referred to as Avogadro's hypothesis or Avogadro's principle) or Avogadro-Ampère's hypothesis is an experimental gas law relating the volume of a gas to the amount of substance of gas present. The law is a specific c ...

to the

to produce the

Ideal Gas Law The ideal gas law, also called the general gas equation, is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gas. It is a good approximation of the behavior of many gases under many conditions, although it has several limitations. It was first stat ...

. PV = nRT * 1846 – Grove publishes an account of the general theory of the conservation of energy in ''On The Correlation of Physical Forces'' * 1847 –

Hermann von Helmholtz Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Associatio ...

publishes a definitive statement of the conservation of energy, the

first law of thermodynamics The first law of thermodynamics is a formulation of the law of conservation of energy, adapted for thermodynamic processes. It distinguishes in principle two forms of energy transfer, heat and thermodynamic work for a system of a constant amou ...

1848–1899

* 1848 – William Thomson extends the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances * 1849 –

William John Macquorn Rankine William John Macquorn Rankine (; 5 July 1820 – 24 December 1872) was a Scottish mechanical engineer who also contributed to civil engineering, physics and mathematics. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson ( ...

calculates the correct relationship between saturated vapour pressure and

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various Conversion of units of temperature, temp ...

using his ''hypothesis of molecular vortices'' * 1850 – Rankine uses his ''vortex'' theory to establish accurate relationships between the temperature,

pressure Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and e ...

, and

density Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematical ...

of gases, and expressions for the

latent heat Latent heat (also known as latent energy or heat of transformation) is energy released or absorbed, by a body or a thermodynamic system, during a constant-temperature process — usually a first-order phase transition. Latent heat can be underst ...

of evaporation of a liquid; he accurately predicts the surprising fact that the apparent

specific heat In thermodynamics, the specific heat capacity (symbol ) of a substance is the heat capacity of a sample of the substance divided by the mass of the sample, also sometimes referred to as massic heat capacity. Informally, it is the amount of heat t ...

of saturated steam will be negative * 1850 –

Rudolf 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 principle ...

coined the term "entropy" (das Wärmegewicht, symbolized S) to denote heat lost or turned into waste. ("Wärmegewicht" translates literally as "heat-weight"; the corresponding English term stems from the Greek τρέπω, "I turn".) * 1850 – Clausius gives the first clear joint statement of the

first First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

and second law of thermodynamics, abandoning the caloric theory, but preserving Carnot's principle * 1851 – Thomson gives an alternative statement of the second law * 1852 – Joule and Thomson demonstrate that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the Joule–Thomson effect or Joule–Kelvin effect * 1854 – Helmholtz puts forward the idea of the

heat death of the universe The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze) is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be un ...

* 1854 – Clausius establishes the importance of ''dQ/T'' ( Clausius's theorem), but does not yet name the quantity * 1854 – Rankine introduces his ''thermodynamic function'', later identified as

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynam ...

* 1856 –

August Krönig August Karl Krönig (; 20 September 1822 – 5 June 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. Biography Krönig was born i ...

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 James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...

discovers the distribution law of molecular velocities * 1859 –

Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He ...

shows that energy emission from a

black body A black body or blackbody is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence. The name "black body" is given because it absorbs all colors of light. A black body ...

is a function of only temperature and frequency * 1862 – "

Disgregation In the history of thermodynamics, disgregation is an early formulation of the concept of entropy. It was defined in 1862 by Rudolf Clausius as the magnitude of the degree in which the molecules of a body are separated from each other. Clausius m ...

", a precursor of

, was defined in 1862 by Clausius as the magnitude of the degree of separation of molecules of a body * 1865 – Clausius introduces the modern

macroscopic The macroscopic scale is the length scale on which objects or phenomena are large enough to be visible with the naked eye, without magnifying optical instruments. It is the opposite of microscopic. Overview When applied to physical phenomena a ...

concept of entropy * 1865 – Josef Loschmidt applies Maxwell's theory to estimate the number-density of molecules in gases, given observed gas viscosities. * 1867 – Maxwell asks whether Maxwell's demon could reverse irreversible processes * 1870 – Clausius proves the scalar

virial theorem In mechanics, the virial theorem provides a general equation that relates the average over time of the total kinetic energy of a stable system of discrete particles, bound by potential forces, with that of the total potential energy of the system. ...

* 1872 –

Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of ther ...

states the

Boltzmann equation The Boltzmann equation or Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) describes the statistical behaviour of a thermodynamic system not in a state of equilibrium, devised by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872.Encyclopaedia of Physics (2nd Edition), R. G. Lerne ...

for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space, and publishes his

H-theorem In classical statistical mechanics, the ''H''-theorem, introduced by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872, describes the tendency to decrease in the quantity ''H'' (defined below) in a nearly-ideal gas of molecules. L. Boltzmann,Weitere Studien über das Wä ...

* 1873 -

Johannes Diderik van der Waals Johannes Diderik van der Waals (; 23 November 1837 – 8 March 1923) was a Dutch theoretical physicist and thermodynamicist famous for his pioneering work on the equation of state for gases and liquids. Van der Waals started his career as a sch ...

formulates his

equation of state In physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics, an equation of state is a thermodynamic equation relating state variables, which describe the state of matter under a given set of physical conditions, such as pressure, volume, temperature, or intern ...

* 1874 – Thomson formally states the

* 1876 –

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 ...

publishes the first of two papers (the second appears in 1878) which discuss phase equilibria,

statistical ensemble In physics, specifically statistical mechanics, an ensemble (also statistical ensemble) is an idealization consisting of a large number of virtual copies (sometimes infinitely many) of a system, considered all at once, each of which represents a ...

s, the free energy as the driving force behind

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the IUPAC nomenclature for organic transformations, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the pos ...

s, and

chemical thermodynamics Chemical thermodynamics is the study of the interrelation of heat and work with chemical reactions or with physical changes of state within the confines of the laws of thermodynamics. Chemical thermodynamics involves not only laboratory measurem ...

in general. * 1876 – Loschmidt criticises Boltzmann's H theorem as being incompatible with microscopic reversibility (

Loschmidt's paradox Loschmidt's paradox, also known as the reversibility paradox, irreversibility paradox or ', is the objection that it should not be possible to deduce an irreversible process from time-symmetric dynamics. This puts the time reversal symmetry of (al ...

). * 1877 – Boltzmann states the relationship between entropy and

probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speakin ...

* 1879 –

Jožef Stefan Josef Stefan ( sl, Jožef Štefan; 24 March 1835 – 7 January 1893) was an ethnic Carinthian Slovene physicist, mathematician, and poet of the Austrian Empire. Life and work Stefan was born in an outskirt village of St. Peter (Slovene: ; to ...

observes that the total radiant flux from a blackbody is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature and states the

Stefan–Boltzmann law The Stefan–Boltzmann law describes the power radiated from a black body in terms of its temperature. Specifically, the Stefan–Boltzmann law states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area of a black body across all wavelengths ...

* 1884 – Boltzmann derives the Stefan–Boltzmann blackbody radiant flux law from thermodynamic considerations * 1888 – Henri-Louis Le Chatelier states his principle that the response of a chemical system perturbed from equilibrium will be to counteract the perturbation * 1889 – Walther Nernst relates the voltage of electrochemical cells to their chemical thermodynamics via the

Nernst equation In electrochemistry, the Nernst equation is a chemical thermodynamical relationship that permits the calculation of the reduction potential of a reaction ( half-cell or full cell reaction) from the standard electrode potential, absolute tempe ...

* 1889 –

Svante Arrhenius Svante August Arrhenius ( , ; 19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) was a Swedish scientist. Originally a physicist, but often referred to as a chemist, Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. He received the Nob ...

introduces the idea of

activation energy In chemistry and physics, activation energy is the minimum amount of energy that must be provided for compounds to result in a chemical reaction. The activation energy (''E''a) of a reaction is measured in joules per mole (J/mol), kilojoules p ...

for chemical reactions, giving the

Arrhenius equation In physical chemistry, the Arrhenius equation is a formula for the temperature dependence of reaction rates. The equation was proposed by Svante Arrhenius in 1889, based on the work of Dutch chemist Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff who had noted in 1 ...

* 1893 –

Wilhelm Wien Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (; 13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody ...

discovers the displacement law for a blackbody's maximum specific intensity

1900–1944

* 1900 –

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

suggests that light may be emitted in discrete frequencies, giving his law of black-body radiation * 1905 –

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

, in the first of his miracle year papers, argues that the reality of quanta would explain the

photoelectric effect The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, and solid sta ...

* 1905 – Einstein mathematically analyzes

as a result of random molecular motion in his paper On the movement of small particles suspended in a stationary liquid demanded by the molecular-kinetic theory of heat * 1906 – Nernst presents a formulation of the

third law of thermodynamics The third law of thermodynamics states, regarding the properties of closed systems in thermodynamic equilibrium: This constant value cannot depend on any other parameters characterizing the closed system, such as pressure or applied magnetic fiel ...

* 1907 – Einstein uses quantum theory to estimate the

of an

Einstein solid The Einstein solid is a model of a crystalline solid that contains a large number of independent three-dimensional quantum harmonic oscillators of the same frequency. The independence assumption is relaxed in the Debye model. While the model provi ...

* 1909 –

Constantin Carathéodory Constantin Carathéodory ( el, Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρή, Konstantinos Karatheodori; 13 September 1873 – 2 February 1950) was a Greek mathematician who spent most of his professional career in Germany. He made significant ...

develops an

axiomatic system In mathematics and logic, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A theory is a consistent, relatively-self-contained body of knowledge which usually contains ...

of thermodynamics * 1910 – Einstein and Marian Smoluchowski find the Einstein–Smoluchowski formula for the attenuation coefficient due to density fluctuations in a gas * 1911 –

Paul Ehrenfest Paul Ehrenfest (18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian theoretical physicist, who made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition a ...

and Tatjana Ehrenfest–Afanassjewa publish their classical review on the statistical mechanics of Boltzmann, ''Begriffliche Grundlagen der statistischen Auffassung in der Mechanik'' * 1912 –

Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye (; ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, D ...

gives an improved heat capacity estimate by allowing low-frequency

phonons In physics, a phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids. A type of quasiparticle, a phonon is an excited state in the quantum mechanic ...

* 1916 – Sydney Chapman and David Enskog systematically develop the kinetic theory of gases. * 1916 – Einstein considers the thermodynamics of

atomic spectral line Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter w ...

s and predicts stimulated emission * 1919 –

James Jeans Sir James Hopwood Jeans (11 September 187716 September 1946) was an English physicist, astronomer and mathematician. Early life Born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, the son of William Tulloch Jeans, a parliamentary correspondent and author. Jeans was ...

discovers that the dynamical constants of motion determine the distribution function for a system of particles * 1920 –

Meghnad Saha Meghnad Saha (6 October 1893 – 16 February 1956) was an Indian astrophysicist who developed the Saha ionization equation, used to describe chemical and physical conditions in stars. His work allowed astronomers to accurately relate the spe ...

states his ionization equation * 1923 – Debye and Erich Hückel publish a statistical treatment of the dissociation of electrolytes * 1924 –

Satyendra Nath Bose Satyendra Nath Bose (; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was a Bengali mathematician and physicist specializing in theoretical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for ...

introduces

Bose–Einstein statistics In quantum statistics, Bose–Einstein statistics (B–E statistics) describes one of two possible ways in which a collection of non-interacting, indistinguishable particles may occupy a set of available discrete energy states at thermodynamic ...

, in a paper translated by Einstein * 1926 – Enrico Fermi, translated as and

Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Univer ...

introduce Fermi–Dirac statistics * 1927 –

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...

introduces the

density matrix In quantum mechanics, a density matrix (or density operator) is a matrix that describes the quantum state of a physical system. It allows for the calculation of the probabilities of the outcomes of any measurement performed upon this system, using ...

representation, establishing

quantum statistical mechanics Quantum statistical mechanics is statistical mechanics applied to quantum mechanical systems. In quantum mechanics a statistical ensemble (probability distribution over possible quantum states) is described by a density operator ''S'', which is ...

* 1928 – John B. Johnson discovers Johnson noise in a resistor * 1928 –

Harry Nyquist Harry Nyquist (, ; February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was a Swedish-American physicist and electronic engineer who made important contributions to communication theory. Personal life Nyquist was born in the village Nilsby of the parish Stora Ki ...

derives the

fluctuation-dissipation theorem The fluctuation–dissipation theorem (FDT) or fluctuation–dissipation relation (FDR) is a powerful tool in statistical physics for predicting the behavior of systems that obey detailed balance. Given that a system obeys detailed balance, the th ...

, a relationship to explain Johnson noise in a resistor * 1931 –

Lars Onsager Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903 – October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian-born American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in C ...

publishes his groundbreaking paper deriving the

Onsager reciprocal relations In thermodynamics, the Onsager reciprocal relations express the equality of certain ratios between flows and forces in thermodynamic systems out of equilibrium, but where a notion of local equilibrium exists. "Reciprocal relations" occur betwe ...

* 1938 –

Anatoly Vlasov Anatoly Aleksandrovich Vlasov (russian: Анато́лий Алекса́ндрович Вла́сов; – 22 December 1975) was a Russian, later Soviet, theoretical physicist prominent in the fields of statistical mechanics, kinetics, and esp ...

proposes the

Vlasov equation The Vlasov equation is a differential equation describing time evolution of the distribution function of plasma consisting of charged particles with long-range interaction, e.g. Coulomb. The equation was first suggested for description of plasma ...

for a correct dynamical description of ensembles of particles with collective long range interaction. * 1939 – Nikolay Krylov and

Nikolay Bogolyubov Nikolay Nikolayevich Bogolyubov (russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Боголю́бов; 21 August 1909 – 13 February 1992), also transliterated as Bogoliubov and Bogolubov, was a Soviet and Russian mathematician and theoretic ...

give the first consistent microscopic derivation of the Fokker–Planck equation in the single scheme of classical and quantum mechanics * 1942 – Joseph L. Doob states his theorem on

Gauss–Markov process Gauss–Markov stochastic processes (named after Carl Friedrich Gauss and Andrey Markov) are stochastic processes that satisfy the requirements for both Gaussian processes and Markov processes. A stationary Gauss–Markov process is unique up to r ...

es * 1944 –

gives an analytic solution to the 2-dimensional

Ising model The Ising model () (or Lenz-Ising model or Ising-Lenz model), named after the physicists Ernst Ising and Wilhelm Lenz, is a mathematical model of ferromagnetism in statistical mechanics. The model consists of discrete variables that represent ...

, including its

phase transition In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states o ...

1945–present

* 1945–1946 –

Nikolay Bogoliubov Nikolay Nikolayevich Bogolyubov (russian: Никола́й Никола́евич Боголю́бов; 21 August 1909 – 13 February 1992), also transliterated as Bogoliubov and Bogolubov, was a Soviet and Russian mathematician and theoretic ...

develops a general method for a microscopic derivation of kinetic equations for classical statistical systems using

BBGKY hierarchy In statistical physics, the BBGKY hierarchy (Bogoliubov–Born–Green–Kirkwood–Yvon hierarchy, sometimes called Bogoliubov hierarchy) is a set of equations describing the dynamics of a system of a large number of interacting particles. The equ ...

* 1947 –

and

Kirill Gurov Kirill Gurov (6 March 1918 – 29 September 1994) was a Soviet Russian theoretical physicist working in the field of physical kinetics. Gurov was born in Moscow, Russia, in the family of a military officer. In 1936, he was accepted without ...

extend this method for a microscopic derivation of kinetic equations for quantum statistical systems * 1948 –

Claude Elwood Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institu ...

establishes information theory * 1957 –

Aleksandr Solomonovich Kompaneets Alexander Solomonovich Kompaneyets (Russian: Александр Соломонович Компанеец) was born on January 4, 1914 in Ekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine) and died on August 19, 1974 in Palanga, Lithuania. He was ...

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 publishes two papers detailing the MaxEnt interpretation of thermodynamics from information theory * 1960–1965 – Dmitry Zubarev develops the method of

non-equilibrium statistical operator Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with physical systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium but can be described in terms of macroscopic quantities (non-equilibrium state variables) that represent an ext ...

, which becomes a classical tool in the statistical theory of non-equilibrium processes * 1972 –

Jacob Bekenstein Jacob David Bekenstein ( he, יעקב בקנשטיין; May 1, 1947 – August 16, 2015) was an American and Israeli theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of ...

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 *1977 – Ilya Prigogine wins the Nobel prize for his work on dissipative structures in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium. The importation and dissipation of energy could reverse the 2nd law of thermodynamics

References