Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (February 20, 1844 September 5, 1906) was an Austrian

physicist and philosopher whose greatest achievement was in the development of statistical
mechanics, which explains and predicts how the properties of atoms (such as mass, charge,
and structure) determine the physical properties of matter (such as viscosity, thermal
conductivity, and diffusion).

Biography[edit]
Childhood and education[edit]
Boltzmann was born in Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire. His father, Ludwig Georg
Boltzmann, was a revenue official. His grandfather, who had moved to Vienna from Berlin,
was a clock manufacturer, and Boltzmann's mother, Katharina Pauernfeind, was originally
from Salzburg. He received his primary education from a private tutor at the home of his
parents. Boltzmann attended high school in Linz, Upper Austria. When Boltzmann was 15,
his father died.

Boltzmann studied physics at the University of Vienna, starting in 1863. Among his teachers
were Josef Loschmidt,Joseph Stefan, Andreas von Ettingshausen and Jozef Petzval.
Boltzmann received his PhD degree in 1866 working under the supervision of Stefan; his
dissertation was on kinetic theory of gases. In 1867 he became a Privatdozent(lecturer).
After obtaining his doctorate degree, Boltzmann worked two more years as Stefan's
assistant. It was Stefan who introduced Boltzmann to Maxwell's work.

Academic career[edit]
In 1869 at age 25, thanks to a letter of recommendation written by Stefan, [2] he was
appointed full Professor ofMathematical Physics at the University of Graz in the province
of Styria. In 1869 he spent several months in Heidelbergworking with Robert
Bunsen and Leo Knigsberger and then in 1871 he was with Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann
von Helmholtz in Berlin. In 1873 Boltzmann joined the University of Vienna as Professor of
Mathematics and there he stayed until 1876.
Ludwig Boltzmann and co-workers in Graz, 1887. (standing, from the left) Nernst, Streintz,Arrhenius,
Hiecke, (sitting, from the left) Aulinger,Ettingshausen, Boltzmann, Klemeni, Hausmanninger

In 1872, long before women were admitted to Austrian universities, he met Henriette von
Aigentler, an aspiring teacher of mathematics and physics in Graz. She was refused
permission to audit lectures unofficially. Boltzmann advised her to appeal, which she did,
successfully. On July 17, 1876 Ludwig Boltzmann married Henriette; they had three
daughters and two sons. Boltzmann went back to Grazto take up the chair of Experimental
Physics. Among his students in Graz were Svante Arrhenius and Walther Nernst.[3][4] He spent
14 happy years in Graz and it was there that he developed his statistical concept of nature.

Boltzmann was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at theUniversity of

Munich in Bavaria, Germany in 1890. In 1893, Boltzmann succeeded his teacher Joseph
Stefan as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna.

Final years[edit]
Boltzmann spent a great deal of effort in his final years defending his theories. He did not get
along with some of his colleagues in Vienna, particularly Ernst Mach, who became a
professor of philosophy and history of sciences in 1895. That same year Georg
Helm and Wilhelm Ostwald presented their position on Energetics at a meeting in Lbeck.
They saw energy, and not matter, as the chief component of the universe. Boltzmann's
position carried the day among other physicists who supported his atomic theories in the
debate.[5] In 1900, Boltzmann went to the University of Leipzig, on the invitation of Wilhelm
Ostwald.[6] After the retirement of Mach due to bad health, Boltzmann returned to Vienna in
1902.[7] In 1903 he founded the Austrian Mathematical Society together with Gustav von
Escherich andEmil Mller. His students included Karl Przibram, Paul Ehrenfest and Lise
Meitner.

In Vienna, Boltzmann taught physics and also lectured on philosophy. Boltzmann's lectures
on natural philosophy were very popular and received considerable attention. His first lecture
was an enormous success. Even though the largest lecture hall had been chosen for it, the
people stood all the way down the staircase. Because of the great successes of Boltzmann's
philosophical lectures, the Emperor invited him for a reception at the Palace.

Boltzmann was subject to rapid alternation of depressed moods with elevated, expansive or
irritable moods, likely the symptoms of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He himself jestingly
attributed his rapid swings in temperament to the fact that he was born during the night
between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.[8]Meitner relates that those who were close to
Boltzmann were aware of his bouts of severe depression and his suicide attempts.
On September 5, 1906, while on a summer vacation in Duino, near Trieste, Boltzmann
hanged himself during an attack of depression.[9][10] He is buried in the
Viennese Zentralfriedhof; his tombstone bears the inscription of the entropy formula:

Philosophy[edit]
Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases seemed to presuppose the reality
of atoms and molecules, but almost all German philosophers and many scientists
like Ernst Mach and the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald disbelieved their existence.
During the 1890s Boltzmann attempted to formulate a compromise position which would
allow both atomists and anti-atomists to do physics without arguing over atoms. His
solution was to use Hertz's theory that atoms were Bilder, that is, models or pictures.
Atomists could think the pictures were the real atoms while the anti-atomists could think
of the pictures as representing a useful but unreal model, but this did not fully satisfy
either group. Furthermore, Ostwald and many defenders of "pure thermodynamics" were
trying hard to refute the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics because of
Boltzmann's assumptions about atoms and molecules and especially statistical
interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Around the turn of the century, Boltzmann's science was being threatened by another
philosophical objection. Some physicists, including Mach's student, Gustav Jaumann,
interpreted Hertz to mean that all electromagnetic behavior is continuous, as if there
were no atoms and molecules, and likewise as if all physical behavior were ultimately
electromagnetic. This movement around 1900 deeply depressed Boltzmann since it
could mean the end of his kinetic theory and statistical interpretation of the second law of
thermodynamics.

After Mach's resignation in Vienna in 1901, Boltzmann returned there and decided to
become a philosopher himself to refute philosophical objections to his physics, but he
soon became discouraged again. In 1904 at a physics conference in St. Louis most
physicists seemed to reject atoms and he was not even invited to the physics section.
Rather, he was stuck in a section called "applied mathematics", he violently attacked
philosophy, especially on allegedly Darwinian grounds but actually in terms of Lamarck's
theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics that people inherited bad philosophy
from the past and that it was hard for scientists to overcome such inheritance.

In 1905 Boltzmann corresponded extensively with the Austro-German philosopher Franz

Brentano with the hope of gaining a better mastery of philosophy, apparently, so that he
could better refute its relevancy in science, but he became discouraged about this
approach as well. In the following year 1906 his mental condition became so bad that he
had to resign his position. He committed suicide in September of that same year by
hanging himself while on vacation with his wife and daughter near Trieste, Italy. [11]

Physics[edit]
Boltzmann's most important scientific contributions were in kinetic theory, including
the MaxwellBoltzmann distribution for molecular speeds in a gas. In addition,Maxwell
Boltzmann statistics and the Boltzmann distribution over energies remain the
foundations of classical statistical mechanics. They are applicable to the
many phenomena that do not require quantum statistics and provide a remarkable
insight into the meaning of temperature.

Boltzmann's 1898 I2 molecule diagram showing atomic "sensitive region" (, ) overlap.

Much of the physics establishment did not share his belief in the reality
of atoms and molecules a belief shared, however, by Maxwell in Scotland
and Gibbs in the United States; and by most chemists since the discoveries of John
Dalton in 1808. He had a long-running dispute with the editor of the preeminent German
physics journal of his day, who refused to let Boltzmann refer to atoms and molecules as
anything other than convenient theoretical constructs. Only a couple of years after
Boltzmann's death, Perrin's studies of colloidal suspensions (19081909), based
on Einstein's theoretical studies of 1905, confirmed the values of Avogadro's
number and Boltzmann's constant, and convinced the world that the tiny particlesreally
exist.

To quote Planck, "The logarithmic connection between entropy and probability was first
stated by L. Boltzmann in his kinetic theory of gases".[12] This famous formula for
entropy S is[13][14]
where kB is Boltzmann's constant, and ln is the natural
logarithm. W is Wahrscheinlichkeit, a German word meaning theprobability of
occurrence of a macrostate[15] or, more precisely, the number of
possible microstates corresponding to the macroscopic state of a system number
of (unobservable) "ways" in the (observable) thermodynamic state of a system can
be realized by assigning different positions and momenta to the various molecules.
Boltzmann's paradigm was an ideal gas of N identical particles, of which Ni are in
the ith microscopic condition (range) of position and momentum. W can be counted
using the formula for permutations

where i ranges over all possible molecular conditions. ( denotes factorial.) The
"correction" in the denominator is because identical particles in the same
condition are indistinguishable.

Boltzmann was also one of the founders of quantum mechanics due to his
suggestion in 1877 that the energy levels of a physical system could be discrete.

The equation for S is engraved on Boltzmann's tombstone at the

Vienna Zentralfriedhof his second grave.[16]

The Boltzmann equation[edit]

Boltzmann's bust in the courtyard arcade of the main building, University of Vienna.
Main article: Boltzmann equation

The Boltzmann equation was developed to describe the dynamics of an ideal

gas.
where represents the distribution function of single-particle position and
momentum at a given time (see the MaxwellBoltzmann distribution), F is a
force, m is the mass of a particle, t is the time and v is an average velocity of
particles.

This equation describes the temporal and spatial variation of the probability
distribution for the position and momentum of a density distribution of a
cloud of points in single-particle phase space. (See Hamiltonian mechanics.)
The first term on the left-hand side represents the explicit time variation of
the distribution function, while the second term gives the spatial variation,
and the third term describes the effect of any force acting on the particles.
The right-hand side of the equation represents the effect of collisions.

Boltzmann's grave in theZentralfriedhof, Vienna, with bust and entropy formula.

In principle, the above equation completely describes the dynamics of an

ensemble of gas particles, given appropriateboundary conditions. This first-
order differential equation has a deceptively simple appearance, since can
represent an arbitrary single-particle distribution function. Also,
the force acting on the particles depends directly on the velocity distribution
function . The Boltzmann equation is notoriously difficult to integrate. David
Hilbert spent years trying to solve it without any real success.

The form of the collision term assumed by Boltzmann was approximate.

However, for an ideal gas the standard ChapmanEnskog solution of the
Boltzmann equation is highly accurate. It is expected to lead to incorrect
results for an ideal gas only under shock wave conditions.
Boltzmann tried for many years to "prove" the second law of
thermodynamics using his gas-dynamical equation his famous H-
theorem. However the key assumption he made in formulating the collision
term was "molecular chaos", an assumption which breaks time-reversal
symmetry as is necessary for anything which could imply the second law. It
was from the probabilistic assumption alone that Boltzmann's apparent
success emanated, so his long dispute with Loschmidt and others
over Loschmidt's paradox ultimately ended in his failure.

Finally, in the 1970s E. G. D. Cohen and J. R. Dorfman proved that a

systematic (power series) extension of the Boltzmann equation to high
densities is mathematically impossible. Consequently, nonequilibrium
statistical mechanics for dense gases and liquids focuses on the Green
Kubo relations, the fluctuation theorem, and other approaches instead.

The Second Law as a law of

disorder[edit]
The idea that the second law of thermodynamics or "entropy law" is a law of
disorder (or that dynamically ordered states are "infinitely improbable") is
due to Boltzmann's view of the second law. In particular, it was his attempt
to reduce it to a stochastic collision function, or law of probability following
from the random collisions of mechanical particles. Following Maxwell,
[17]
Boltzmann modeled gas molecules as colliding billiard balls in a box,
noting that with each collision nonequilibrium velocity distributions (groups of
molecules moving at the same speed and in the same direction) would
become increasingly disordered leading to a final state of macroscopic
uniformity and maximum microscopic disorder or the state of maximum
entropy (where the macroscopic uniformity corresponds to the obliteration of
all field potentials or gradients).[18] The second law, he argued, was thus
simply the result of the fact that in a world of mechanically colliding particles
disordered states are the most probable. Because there are so many more
possible disordered states than ordered ones, a system will almost always
be found either in the state of maximum disorder the macrostate with the
greatest number of accessible microstates such as a gas in a box at
equilibrium or moving towards it. A dynamically ordered state, one with
molecules moving "at the same speed and in the same direction",
Boltzmann concluded, is thus "the most improbable case conceivable...an
infinitely improbable configuration of energy." [19]
 Boltzmann accomplished the feat of showing that the second law of
thermodynamics is only a statistical fact. The gradual disordering of energy
is analogous to the disordering of an initially ordered pack of cards under
repeated shuffling, and just as the cards will finally return to their original
order if shuffled a gigantic number of times, so the entire universe must
some day regain, by pure chance, the state from which it first set out. (This
optimistic coda to the idea of the dying universe becomes somewhat muted
when one attempts to estimate the timeline which will probably elapse
before it spontaneously occurs.)[20] The tendency for entropy increase seems
to cause difficulty to beginners in thermodynamics, but is easy to
understand from the standpoint of the theory of probability. Consider two
ordinarydice, with both sixes face up. After the dice are shaken, the chance
of finding these two sixes face up is small (1 in 36); thus one can say that
the random motion (the agitation) of the dice, like the chaotic collisions of
molecules because of thermal energy, causes the less probable state to
change to one that is more probable. With millions of dice, like the millions
of atoms involved in thermodynamic calculations, the probability of their all
being sixes becomes so vanishingly small that the system must move to one
of the more probable states.[21] However, mathematically the odds of all the
dice results not being a pair sixes is also as hard as the ones of all of them
being sixes, and since statistically the data tend to balance, one in every 36
pairs of dice will tend to be a pair of sixes. And the cards, when shuffled, will
sometimes present a certain temporary sequence order even if in its whole
they are disordered.

Boltzmann worked on statistical mechanics using probability to describe how

the properties of atoms determine the properties of matter. In particular his
work relates to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which he derived from the
principles of mechanics in the 1890s.

The equations of Newtonian mechanics are reversible in time

and Poincar proved that if a mechanical system is in a given state it will return
infinitely often to a state arbitrarily close to the given one. Zermelo deduced
that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is impossible in a mechanical system.
Boltzmann asserted that entropy increases almost always, rather than always.
However he believed that Poincar's result, although correct in theory, was in
practice impossible to observe since the time before a system returns to near its
original state was too long.
Boltzmann's ideas were not accepted by many scientists. In 1895, at a scientific
meeting in Lbeck, Wilhelm Ostwald presented a paper in which he stated:-

The actual irreversibility of natural phenomena thus proves the existence of

processes that cannot be described by mechanical equations, and with this the
verdict on scientific materialism is settled.

Sommerfeld, who was at the meeting, described the resulting battle between
Ostwald and Boltzmann. Sommerfeld wrote:-

... Boltzmann was seconded by Felix Klein. The battle between Boltzmann and
Ostwald resembled the battle of the bull with the supple fighter. However, this
time the bull was victorious ... . The arguments of Boltzmann carried the day.
We, the young mathematicians of that time, were all on the side of Boltzmann ...
.

Ostwald led the opposition to Boltzmann's ideas which were opposed by many
European scientists, they misunderstood them, not fully grasping the statistical
nature of his reasoning. However some, including Mach, thought the arguments
were too violent, and this certainly appeared to be the case when Boltzmann
attempted suicide while a colleague of Ostwald.

In 1904 Boltzmann visited the World's Fair in St Louis, USA. He lectured on

applied mathematics and then went on to visit Berkeley and Stanford.
Unfortunately he failed to realise that the new discoveries concerning radiation
that he learnt about on this visit were about to prove his theories correct.

Boltzmann continued to defend his belief in atomic structure and in a 1905

publication Populre Schriften he tried to explain how the physical world could
be described by differential equationswhich represented the macroscopic view
without representing the underlying atomic structure. :-

May I be excused for saying with banality that the forest hides the trees for
those who think that they disengage themselves from atomistics by the
consideration of differential equations.

Attacks on his work continued and he began to feel that his life's work was
about to collapse despite his defence of his theories. Depressed and in bad
health, Boltzmann committed suicide just before experiment verified his work.

On holiday with his wife and daughter at the Bay of Duino near Trieste, he
hanged himself while his wife and daughter were swimming. However the
cause of his suicide may have been wrongly attributed to the lack of acceptance
of his ideas. We will never know the real cause which may have been the result
of mental illness causing his depression.

Boltzmanns Critiques of Other Philosophies Firstly, it is appropriate to mention some

critiques Boltzmann made against other philosophies. Within these critiques, it is possible
to see Boltzmann worry about danger of popular philosophies expressed by certainty for
public. Two typical examples were mentioned here. Since it is often thought that
Boltzmanns critique of traditional philosophies is due to his personal dislike, an example
from traditional philosophy and another regarding a philosophy expressed by scientists in
the field of philosophy of science are noted.

Ludwig Boltzmann was greatly demoralized due to the harsh criticism of his work. He
committed suicide on September 5, 1906 at Duino, Italy by hanging himself. He was 62
years old.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1717/2/Ludwig_Boltzmann.pdf

http://www.famousscientists.org/ludwig-boltzmann/

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Boltzmann.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann