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Ludwig Boltzmann

Bring forth what is true; Write it so it it's clear. Defend it to your last breath.

-Ludwig Boltzmann-

Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Boltzmann is a famous physicist who is known mostly for his work on
statistical mechanics and the field of thermodynamics.This lesson will explore the
personal life and career of Ludwig Boltzmann, including his scientific
contributions that have made him a household name.

Childhood and Early Life

Ludwig Boltzmann was born on February 20th, 1844 in Vienna, Austria to his
father, Ludwig Boltzmann, and his mother, Katherina Pauernfeind. Ludwig
Boltzmann's father died when he was very young, and Ludwig was home-tutored
at a young age. The family moved soon after Ludwig's birth, and he attended high
school in Linz, Austria. Boltzmann attended the University of Vienna, and
completed his PhD in physics in 1866 with his dissertation about the kinetic
theory of gases. At the University of Vienna, he met the famous physicist Josef
Stefan, who eventually became his PhD advisor. Soon after Boltzmann obtained
his PhD, he became Stefan's assistant at the University of Vienna. In 1869,
Ludwig Boltzmann accepted a professorship of physics at the University of Graz,
a position he would have for the next four years. Boltzmann eventually held
professorship positions in mathematics and physics at the Universities of Graz,
Munich, and Leipzig. In 1872, when Boltzmann was lecturing at an Austrian
university, a young teacher of physics and mathematics, Henriette von Aigentler,
wasn't allowed to audit the lectures due to her being a woman. Ludwig defended
her and encouraged her to file an appeal. This woman, Henriette von Aigentler,
eventually became Boltzmann's wife in 1876 and together they had three
daughters and two sons.

Career and Scientific Contributions

Nothing is more practical than a good theory.

-Ludwig Boltzmann-

It was in the 1870s that Ludwig Boltzmann published his scientific theories that
shocked the physics world. Boltzmann published a paper about the second law of
thermodynamics, the law that states that the total entropy, or degree of disorder
of a system, can only increase over time for an isolated system. Boltzmann's paper
argued that the second law of thermodynamics can be explained by applying the
laws of mechanics to the motion of the atoms and by using the theory of
probability. In developing this theory, Boltzmann declared that the second law of
thermodynamics was statistical, founding what is now called statistical
mechanics, or the use of statistics in the laws of classical and quantum
mechanics. Boltzmann went on to state that this isolated system with increasing
entropy moved to a state of equilibrium, as a state of equilibrium was the most
probable state of a material system.

As well, Ludwig Boltzmann collaborated with famous British physicist James

Maxwell, who had just published his theory of electromagnetism. Although
mostly ignored at that time by the physics community, Boltzmann was one of the
few physicists that saw the importance of Maxwell's discovery, and together in
1881 they worked out a law that describes the distribution of energy of molecules
for a classical gas at a specific temperature. This law is called the Maxwell-
Boltzmann distribution law. As well, Boltzmann and his previous mentor Josef
Stefan collaborated on what is known as the Stefan-Boltzmann law, which they
published in 1884. The Stefan-Boltzmann law stated that the total radiant heat
energy emitted from a surface was proportional to the fourth power of its absolute
temperature. The Stefan-Boltzmann law can be seen below:

With E referring to the radiant heat energy, T referring to the absolute temperature
of the surface and the σ representing the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

Later Life and Death

The life contest is primarily a competition for available energy.

Ludwig Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist whose efforts radically changed several
branches of physics. He is mostly noted for his role in the development of statistical
mechanics and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Vienna on February 20, 1844, Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann’s father,

Ludwig Georg Boltzmann, was a tax official. He was the eldest of three children
and his mother, Katharina Pauernfeind, was from a wealthy family. Ludwig was
initially educated by a private tutor and he then attended the local gymnasium in
Linz where he showed great aptitude in mathematics and science.

Ludwig learnt to play the piano and played throughout his life. His father died
when he was just fifteen.

At the age of 19 Ludwig Boltzmann enrolled at the University of Vienna, studying

mathematics and physics. He earned his PhD degree three years later in 1866.

Career Path:

Ludwig Boltzmann taught mathematics, experimental physics and theoretical

physics at several universities, but theoretical physics was his main passion. He
wrote his famous travelogue “Reise eines deutschen Professors ins Eldorado”
(Journey of a German professor to the Eldorado) during this time.

He obtained his first professorship in 1869 as professor of mathematical physics at

the University of Graz, moving to the University of Vienna as professor of
mathematics in 1873.

In 1876 Boltzmann returned to Graz to take up the chair of experimental physics

and the same year he married mathematics teacher Henriette von Aigentler. They
had three daughters and two sons.

Boltzmann appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of

Munich in Bavaria in 1890, returning to the University of Vienna as Professor of
Theoretical Physics in 1894.
Apart from a short spell at the University of Leipzig from 1900 to 1902,
Boltzmann returned to Vienna to teach physics and natural philosophy until his
death.

Contributions and Achievements:

Boltzmann’s scientific approach was to attack the problem. He explained the

second law of thermodynamics in the early 1870s on the basis of the atomic
theory of matter.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy of the entire
universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time. The second law
also states that the changes in the entropy in the universe can never be negative.

He demonstrated that the second law could be interpreted by blending the laws of
mechanics, applied to the motions of the atoms, with the theory of probability. He
clarified that the second law is an essentially statistical law. He formulated most
of the structure of statistical mechanics, which was later researched by the
mathematical physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.

In addition to his contributions to statistical mechanics, Boltzmann made detailed

calculations in the kinetic theory of gases. He was one of the first people to
understand the significance of James Clerk Maxwell‘s theory of
electromagnetism, on which he wrote a two-volume treatise.

Boltzmann also worked on a derivation for black-body radiation based on the

Stefan’s law, which was later termed by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz as “a true pearl
of theoretical physics”.

His work in statistical mechanics was vocally criticized by Wilhelm Ostwald and
the energeticists who disregarded atoms and based physical science exclusively on
energy conditions. They were unable to understand the statistical nature of
Boltzmann’s logic.

His ideas were supported by the later discoveries in atomic physics in the early
1900, for instance Brownian motion, which can only be explained by statistical
mechanics.

Later Life and Death:

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.
Ludwig Boltzmann
(1844-1906)
Boltzmann's first attempt to derive the second law of thermodynamics assumed
that gas particles followed strict dynamical laws, that is, Newton's classical
mechanics. In 1872 Boltzmann derived a mathematical quantity (his H-Theorem)
that had the same property of increase for a gas approaching equilibrium as
Rudolf Clausius' entropy law. Clausius enunciated the two laws of
thermodynamics. First, the energy in the world is a constant. Second, the entropy
of the world increases to a maximum.

James Clerk Maxwell was critical of Boltzmann's result. He argued (correctly as it

turns out) that the kinetic theory of gases must be purely statistical, not
deterministic and dynamical.

Boltzmann had in 1866 derived Maxwell's velocity distribution for the molecules
of a gas in equilibrium dynamically, putting it on a firmer ground than Maxwell.

Boltzmann's mentor and colleague Josef Loschmidt criticized Boltzmann's 1872

demonstration of entropy increase, on the grounds that Newton's dynamical laws
are reversible. If all the individual particles could be turned around exactly (or if
time could be reversed), Boltzmann's H-Theorem should show that the entropy
would decrease, violating the second law. Some, including Boltzmann, suggested
that time might be simply the direction in which entropy increases. Arthur Stanley
Eddington later called this the Arrow of Time.

The basic problem is - how can macroscopic irreversibility result from

microscopic processes that are fundamentally reversible?
We shall see that the answer is found in the quantum nature of the atoms and
molecules, especially when they interact with radiation.

Five years later, responding to Loschmidt's criticism, Boltzmann reformulated his

H-theorem on purely statistical and probabilistic grounds. Maxwell, who died in
1879, did not remark on this obvious improvement. He found Boltzmann's papers
much too long and too dense to read. (Boltzmann found Maxwell's papers too
brief to contain a full explanation.)

It is not clear that Boltzmann would agree with Maxwell about the implicit loss of
determinism in physics. Boltzmann maintained (as his student Franz Exner, and
Exner's student Erwin Schrödinger would later briefly insist) that observational
evidence can never justify our assumptions of strict determinism.

Boltzmann was under severe attacks from colleagues for espousing the reality of
atoms. He may have been wary of emphasizing that atomic motions are chaotic
and random. Real ontological chance was anathema to deterministic nineteenth-
century thinkers and even considered atheistic by many, since it implies denial of
the omniscience of God.

Boltzmann was a great believer in theories, but he knew that they could "go
beyond experience," a phrase he used more than once and the key phrase in Franz
Exner's denial of strict causal determinism decades before quantum mechanics. As
Albert Einstein would later explain, theories are "free inventions of the human
mind." Theories are guesses, new ideas, fictions, and pure information that goes
beyond Ernst Mach's positivist belief that science includes only "economic
summaries" of the results of experiments.

The confirmation of theories always rests on the statistics of experiments. So

theories are always probabilistic predictions about what will happen in the
experiments. And experiments can only provide statistical evidence, although
sometime the evidence is so good that we can regard it as "adequately" or
statistically determined.