Related papers: Contemporary Reaction to Gibbs's Statistical Mecha…
J. Willard Gibbs' Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics was the definitive work of one of America's greatest physicists. Gibbs' book on statistical mechanics establishes the basic principles and fundamental results that have…
This paper reviews a paper from 1906 by J. Henri Poincar\'e on statistical mechanics with a background in his earlier work and notable connections to J. Willard Gibbs. Poincar\'e's paper presents important ideas that are still relevant for…
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Boltzmann explained how irreversible macroscopic laws, in particular the second law of thermodynamics, originate in the time-reversible laws of microscopic physics. Boltzmann's analysis,…
The application of classical methods of statistical mechanics, originally developed by Ludwig Boltzmann in gas dynamics, to the description of social phenomena is a successful story that we try to outline in this paper. On one hand, it is…
This note offers an overview of how Josiah Willard Gibbs's Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics, published simultaneously in London and New York in 1902, spread through European university libraries. Contrary to the received idea…
An unified thermodynamical framework based in the use of a generalized Massieu-Planck thermodynamic potential is proposed and a new formulation of Boltzmann-Gibbs Statistical Mechanics is established. Under this philosophy a generalization…
In two respects Ludwig Boltzmann was a pioneer of quantum mechanics. First because in his statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics he introduced the theory of probability into a fundamental law of physics and thus…
Obtaining a rigorous justification of the kinetic theory of gases from Newton's second law of dynamics for a large number of identical spheres interacting by elastic binary collisions, is a problem formulated by Hilbert in 1900 (Hilbert's…
We brief{}ly review the connection between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. We show that, in order to satisfy thermodynamics and its Legendre transformation mathematical frame, the celebrated Boltzmann-Gibbs~(BG) statistical…
The statistical mechanics of Gibbs is a juxtaposition of subjective, probabilistic ideas on the one hand and objective, mechanical ideas on the other. In this paper, we follow the path set out by Jaynes, including elements added…
The domain of validity of standard thermodynamics and Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics is discussed and then formally enlarged in order to hopefully cover a variety of anomalous systems. The generalization concerns {\it nonextensive}…
The issue of the thermodynamics of a system of distinguishable particles is discussed in this paper. In constructing the statistical mechanics of distinguishable particles from the definition of Boltzmann entropy, it is found that the…
We summarize the papers published by Einstein in the Annalen der Physik in the years 1902-04 on the derivation of the properties of thermal equilibrium on the basis of the mechanical equations of motion and of the calculus of probabilities.…
In 1910 Einstein published a crucial aspect of his understanding of Boltzmann entropy. He essentially argued that the likelihood function of any system composed by two probabilistically independent subsystems {\it ought} to be factorizable…
Translation of Ludwig Boltzmann's paper "\"Uber die Eigenschaften monozyklischer und anderer damit verwandter Systeme" Crelles Journal 98. S. 68-94. 1884 u. 1885 from German into English. In this foundational paper Boltzmann introduced two…
This paper gives a short review of the history of statistical physics starting from D. Bernoulli's kinetic theory of gases in the 18th century until the recent new developments in nonequilibrium kinetic theory in the last decades of this…
Boltzmann introduced in the 1870's a logarithmic measure for the connection between the thermodynamical entropy and the probabilities of the microscopic configurations of the system. His entropic functional for classical systems was…
Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics is based on the entropy $S_{BG}=-k \sum_{i=1}^W p_i \ln p_i$. It enables a successful thermal approach of ubiquitous systems, such as those involving short-range interactions, markovian processes, and,…
Boltzmann's Principle S = k ln W was repeatedly criticized by Einstein since it lacked a proper dynamical foundation in view of the thermal motion of the particles, out of which a physical system consists. This suggests, in particular, that…
Introducing the Boltzmann distribution very early in a statistical thermodynamics course (in the spirit of Feynmann) has many didactic advantages, in particular that of easily deriving the Gibbs entropy formula. In this note, a short…