Lectures On Gas Theory

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.

. These papers shed light on the formation of Maxwell's ideas and theories within the structure of a professional scientific discipline, physics, that had only recently taken shape. While Maxwell responded to and relied on the work of his colleagues, his interpretations often placed his work apart from theirs, to be exploited by later generations of physicists.

Winner of the 1987 Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society "A majestic study of a most important spoch of intellectual history."—Brian Pippard, Times Literary Supplement "The authors' use of archival sources hitherto almost untouched gives their story a startling vividness. These volumes are among the finest works produced by historians of physics."—Jed Z. Buchwald, Isis "The authors painstakingly reconstruct the minutiae of laboratory budgets, instrument collections, and student numbers; they disentangle the intrigues of faculty appointments and the professional values those appointments reflected; they explore collegial relationships among physicists; and they document the unending campaign of scientists to wring further support for physics from often reluctant ministries."—R. Steven Turner, Science "Superbly written and exhaustively researched."—Peter Harman, Nature

This introductory graduate-level text emphasizes physical aspects of the theory of Boltzmann's equation in a detailed presentation that doubles as a practical resource for professionals. 1971 edition.

One of the pillars of modern science, statistical mechanics, owes much to one man, the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906). As a result of his unusual working and writing styles, his enormous contribution remains little read and poorly understood. The purpose of this book is to make the Boltzmann corpus more accessible to physicists, philosophers, and historians, and so give it new life. The means are introductory biographical and historical materials, detailed and lucid summaries of every relevant publication, and a final chapter of critical synthesis. Special attention is given to Boltzmann's theoretical tool-box and to his patient construction of lofty formal systems even before their full conceptual import could be known. This constructive tendency largely accounts for his lengthy style, for the abundance of new constructions, for the relative vagueness of their object—and for the puzzlement of commentators. This book will help the reader cross the stylistic barrier and see how ingeniously Boltzmann combined atoms, mechanics, and probability to invent new bridges between the micro- and macro-worlds.

This book gives the first detailed record of Ludwig Boltzmann's life and philosophical thoughts during his final years, a period of major change in physics, needing a new methodology of theoretical, idealized science. The growing primacy of physical theory over observation and experimentation meant that Boltzmann needed a methodology which went beyond Ernst Mach's phenomenalism and theory of economy. The documentary approach of this book means that historians, philosophers, and physicists can use it as a source and foundation for better understanding the development of quantum and relativity theory, the new advances in methodology, and as an aid in improving or creating their own contributions to methodology and philosophy of science. Seeds of future linguistic philosophy are also present.