The question of who is the greatest physicist of the physicists who are household names-- Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, etc.-- has been debated thousands of times, and will undoubtedly be debated thousands of times in the future. What isn't as often discussed is the ranking of physicists who aren't in that rare group of household names-- people whose surnames are attached to equations that GRE takers struggle to memorize, but whose given names and life stories are mostly forgotten.
Well, this post is for them: The following poll presents a list of important figures from the history of thermodynamics. Which of them is the greatest and most deserving of recognition?
(Thanks to Sean on Twitter for giving me the idea.)
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Claude Shannon, who was neither a physicist nor a chemist. He was, however, an awesome juggler.
Maxwell should probably be on the ballot, but I would vote for Boltzmann anyway.
I figured Maxwell is more famous for his contributions to E&M than thermo. He's also arguably in the more famous category with Einstein and Newton-- the goal is to pump up people who are less well known.
Gibbs! Yes, I'm a Chemist, but sheesh.
Pssh, Ludwig Boltzmann is the obvious choice. Have you SEEN his beard? The whole 'atoms existing' thing was pretty cool too, I guess.
When Poincare proved the recurrance relation, showing that any initial thermodynamic state in a closed system will eventually reproduce itself, Boltzmann's only comment was "You should live so long."
He then showed, for a state the size of a small room, the timescale for recurrance was around 10^10^100 years.
So, umm... my vote is for Boltzmann.
Best? What a funny adjective to use. But in terms of the significance of their work, Clausius, who was the real founder of thermodynamics, by a landslide. Boltzmann second.
I could probably think up some stunningly funny answer that is both surprising and illuminating - but such effort is not favorable thermodynamically. A chemist would say its too "uphill".
I second that Gibbs should be on the list, but I'd still vote for Boltzmann because he was the pioneer.
Gibbs!
I realized I'm also a big fan of Ilya Prigogine.
Seriously, Gibbs needs to be there...it would have been a tough call for me between him and Boltzmann.
Benjamin Thompson (Sir), Count Rumford.
I also vote gibbs
How about Avogadro who's name always makes me think of Avacados.
Gibbs was the dude!
Maybe Kelvin would have got more votes if the temperature units were Thomsons.
I would also have to cast a vote for Batma... I mean, Gibbs. C'mon, the guy pretty much laid the foundation for theoretical thermodynamics, invented vector analysis, had some pretty entertaining battles of wit with Hamilton's student who kept throwing temper tantrums over how people were using vectors instead of quaternions, and his geometric picture of thermodynamic quantities inspired Maxwell to make a plaster cast of the plot for Gibbs.
So, yeah... I vote for Gibbs.
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I'm surprised no one mentioned the biggest reason to vote for Boltzmann: The equation "S = k log W" is engraved on his tombstone. [Trivia courtesy of the Bronowsky TV series on PBS many decades ago.]
I also agree that Gibbs belongs on the list.
However, I do have to question the premise of "household names", since the guy who worked on my heat pump knew that the JT in "JT valve" stands for Joule-Thomson.
Nice, poll. We've been running a similar poll for the last year or so: "who is the greatest thermodynamicist of all time" (ten choices), at the eoht wiki:
http://www.eoht.info/page/Thermodynamics+founders
where the results are: Clausius (#1), Gibbs (#2), with Boltzmann and Maxwell tied for (#3).
Some other physicist who I will name in a comment:
the ensemble of major contributors to:
(1) quantum thermodynamics, which attempts to combine thermodynamics and quantum mechanics into a coherent whole, starting in 1900, Max Planck outlined the "quantum hypothesis", i.e. that the energy of atomic systems can be quantized, as based on the first two laws of thermodynamics as described by Rudolf Clausius (1865) and Ludwig Boltzmann (1877), and perfected by Einstein's analysis of Brownian motion.
(2) nonequilibrium thermodynamics, featuring Onsager (for sure!), Ilya Prigogine, Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon, Stuart Kauffman.
(3) Various folks, including von Neumann, Feynman, and Deutch and the IBM group of Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett who nailed reversible computing and drove a stake through the heart of Maxwell's Demon.