Timeline of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and random processes

Timeline of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and random processes

• 1738 - Kinetic theory of gases first proposed by Daniel Bernoulli but fails to gain recognition in the face of Joseph Black's caloric theory.
• 1761 - Joseph Black discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing temperature when melting.
• 1776 - John Smeaton publishes a paper on experiments relating power, work, momentum and kinetic energy, and supporting the conservation of energy.
• 1798 - Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson) has the idea that heat is a form of energy.
• 1804 - Sir John Leslie observes that a matt black surface radiates heat more effectively than a polished surface.
• 1810 - Sir John Leslie freezes water to ice artificially.
• 1813 - Peter Ewart supports the idea of the conservation of energy in his paper On the measure of moving force. The paper strongly influences John Dalton and his pupil, James Joule.
• 1820 - John Herapath develops some ideas in the kinetic theory of gases but mistakenly associates temperature with molecular momentum rather than kinetic energy. His work receives little attention other than from Joule.
• 1822 - Joseph Fourier formally introduces the use of dimensions for physical quantities in his Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur.
• 1824 - Sadi Carnot analyzes the efficiency of steam engines.
• 1827 - Robert Brown discovers the Brownian motion of pollen and dye particles in water.
• 1831 - Macedonio Melloni demonstrates that black body radiation can be reflected, refracted and polarised in the same way as light.
• 1834 - Émile Clapeyron presents a formulation of the second law of thermodynamics.
• 1843 - John James Waterston fully expounds the kinetic theory of gases but is ridiculed and ignored.
• 1843 - James Joule experimentally finds the mechanical equivalent of heat.
• 1848 - Lord Kelvin discovers the absolute zero point of temperature.
• 1849 - William John Macquorn Rankine calculates the correct relationship between saturated vapour pressure and temperature using his hypothesis of molecular vortices.
• 1850 - Rankine uses his vortex theory to establish accurate relationships between the temperature, pressure and density of gases, and expressions for the latent heat of evaporation of a liquid. He accurately predicts the surprising fact that the apparent specific heat of saturated steam will be negative.
• 1852 - James Joule and Lord Kelvin demonstrate that a rapidly expanding gas cools.
• 1854 - Rankine introduces his thermodynamic function, later identified with entropy.
• 1856 - August Krönig publishes an account of the kinetic theory of gases, probably after reading Waterston's work.
• 1859 - James Clerk Maxwell discovers the distribution law of molecular velocities
• 1865 - Rudolf Clausius introduces the modern macroscopic concept of entropy.
• 1870 - Clausius proves the scalar virial theorem.
• 1872 - Ludwig Boltzmann states the Boltzmann equation for the temporal development of distribution functions in phase space.
• 1874 - Lord Kelvin formally states the second law of thermodynamics.
• 1876 - Josiah Gibbs begins a two-year-long series of papers which discusses phase equilibria, the free energy as the driving force behind chemical reactions, and chemical thermodynamics in general.
• 1879 - Jožef Stefan observes that the total radiant flux from a blackbody is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature and states the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
• 1884 - Ludwig Boltzmann derives the Stefan-Boltzmann blackbody radiant flux law from thermodynamic considerations.
• 1888 - Henri-Louis Le Chatelier states that the response of a chemical system perturbed from equilbrium will be to counteract the perturbation.
• 1893 - Wilhelm Wien discovers the displacement law for a blackbody's maximum specific intensity.
• 1905 - Albert Einstein mathematically analyzes the Brownian motion.
• 1906 - Walther Nernst presents a formulation of the third law of thermodynamics.
• 1910 - Albert Einstein and Marian Smoluchowski find the Einstein-Smoluchowski formula for the attenuation coefficient due to density fluctuations in a gas.
• 1916 - Sydney Chapman and David Enskog systematically develop the kinetic theory of gases.
• 1919 - James Jeans discovers that the dynamical constants of motion determine the distribution function for a system of particles
• 1920 - Meghnad Saha states his ionization equation
• 1923 - Peter Debye and Erich Huckel publish a statistical treatment of the dissociation of electrolytes
• 1928 - J.B. Johnson discovers Johnson noise in a resistor
• 1928 - Harry Nyquist derives the fluctuation-dissipation relationship for a resistor to explain Johnson noise
• 1942 - J.L. Doob states his theorem on Gauss-Markov processes
• 1957 - A.S. Kompaneets derives his Compton scattering Fokker-Planck equation
• 1957 - R. Kubo derives the first of the Green-Kubo relations for linear transport coefficients.fr:Histoire de la thermodynamique et de la mécanique statistique