Product Description

BOLTZMANN'S ATOM tells the story of the crucial scientific struggle over the existence of the atom during the second half of the 19th century. This struggle was a turning point in the history of the modern world. It would never have happened without the forgotten genius of Ludwig Boltzmann, a 19th century Austrian theoretical physicist who had a string of deeply profound insights primarily into the physical nature of heat, but also gas, matter, and, in fact, literally everything. In 1850 no university taught such a subject as theoretical physics, but by 1900 it was a fully fledged discipline with whole institutes devoted to it. This burgeoning scientific movement led within just a few years to the discovery of quantum mechanics by Max Planck, radioactivity by Marie Curie, general relativity by Albert Einstein, the uncertainty principle by Werner Heisenberg, and more recently quantum electodynamics by Richard Feynman, the quark by Murray Gell-Mann, and even up-to-the minute developments in chaos and superstring theory. Indeed, as David Lindley shows, Boltzman's brilliant insights brought about the golden age of physics that we continue to live in today. David Lindley frames his story with the long running debate between Boltzmann and Ernst Mach who held that theoretical physics was completely misguided. Mach's memorable line in 1900 "I don't believe atoms exist" is where the book begins.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #636448 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
Born in Austria and something of a bumpkin by nature, the 19th-century physicist Ludwig Boltzmann did not fit in easily in the highly cultured German universities in which he taught for many years. To add to his difficulties, he stirred up controversy by proposing that scientists could make intelligent guesses about the behaviour of atoms, which, though they moved randomly, could be described by certain probabilistic generalisations. His suggestion, hinging on novel interpretations of statistical theory, was not immediately acclaimed. "To an audience of physicists raised in the belief that scientific laws ought to encapsulate absolute certainties and unerring rules", writes scientist and journalist David Lindley, "these were profound and disturbing changes".

Opposed by the then influential physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach, who urged that scientists should stick to classical thermodynamics, Boltzmann was hard-pressed to convince his colleagues that the behaviour of atoms could in fact be explained by laws thought to apply only to the gaming table; Mach objected, and with some cause, that "the fact that the theory worked was not enough to prove that the assumptions on which the theory rested were true". It would take the next generation of scientists, among them Albert Einstein, to provide more solid proof for Boltzmann's hunches, and while Mach's contributions to physics have largely been superseded, Boltzmann's endure in quantum mechanics and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for the velocities of atoms in a gas. In this lively account, David Lindley tells the story of his many failures, and of his eventual success. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
In this well-researched study, Lindley (The End of Physics), a physicist and editor at Science News, follows the career of Ludwig Boltzmann, who played a quiet yet crucial role in physics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1897, Boltzmann proposed the then-controversial premise that matter consisted of atoms and molecules. At the time, no proof of atomic theory yet existed, and many people considered it only a fiction. Boltzmann was the first to pursue the idea that molecules in gases move with varying velocities and that these variations could be evaluated using statistical methods. Lindley describes the controversy surrounding Boltzmann's scientific publications and his angst when his theories failed to gain wide acceptance. His search for academic acceptance led him to professorships in Vienna, Graz, Munich and finally back to Vienna, sometimes these settings blur as the author jumps backward and forward in time. But Lindley's precise detailing of the inception of modern atomic theory does not falter, and he leads the lay reader along with straightforward analogies. In 1905, toward the end of Boltzmann's life, Einstein applied Boltzmann's techniques, but his results were largely overshadowed by his papers on relativity, published the same year. Boltzmann, meanwhile, had sunk into a clinical depression. In the fall of 1906 he took his own life. Within a few years, his fundamental tools would enable the development of quantum theory. Lindley offers a well-crafted blend of biography and science; readers who sought out David Bodanis's E=mc2 will also enjoy this similar attempt to explain for laypeople the basis of modern physics. (Jan. 18)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Now enshrined in scientific orthodoxy, the notion that such phenomena as heat and expansion derive from the motion of invisible atoms once attracted only the most adventurous minds. Lindley here recounts the life journey of one of the greatest of these minds, so rescuing from obscurity a great intellectual pioneer whose atomic theorizing gave new coherence to thermodynamics and whose statistical techniques paved the way to a probabilistic redefinition of all physics. In Boltzmann's lifelong engagement with the atomic hypothesis, readers see how a single determined mind can slowly tease out the profound implications of a difficult idea. We also see how Boltzmann progressed from a daring extension of a single formula for calculating the velocity of atoms in a gas to the full development of atomic kinetics, so shaking the foundations of classical physics and opening the way for the quantum revolution effected by Planck and Einstein. While sparing us the mathematical complexities, Lindley conveys a fully nuanced sense of the obstacles--conceptual, personal, and professional--that Boltzmann had to surmount to frame his daring theory. Perhaps even more important, Lindley shows how Boltzmann's defeat of skeptical empiricism secured a new intellectual freedom in science for all future theorists. An engrossing portrait of an epoch-making thinker. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Still Reverberating Conflict
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and made important contributions to the kinetic theory of gases and thermodynamics. His work was based on the hypothesis of the existence of atoms, and was not accepted by the majority of scientists in those days. In the undergraduate physics course, our teacher told us that Boltzmann committed suicide. I wanted to know why he ended his life so sadly, but did not have a chance to learn about it for many years. David Lindley's book gave me a clear answer to my question and much more. I was intrigued by the story about the romance between Boltzmann, a youth "whose energies and thoughts were rarely distracted from physics," and Henriette von Aigentler, a young student at a teacher training college.

The author gives a readable account not only of Boltzmann's life and work but also of work and philosophy of those scientists who opposed his theory, developed a similar theory, or confirmed his hypothesis, James Clerk Maxwell, Wilhelm Ostwald, Ernst Mach, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Max Planck and Albert Einstein among them. Thus readers can get good understanding about Boltzmann's depressive mood and the significance and greatness of his work. The conflict between Boltzmann's atomic hypothesis and Mach's philosophy that science should be based only on observable facts is discussed especially in detail in this book.

Lindley teaches us that a similar conflict also exists nowadays. Namely, he writes in Chapter 7, ". . . now some physicists argue for the existence of superstrings and other curious entities that will never be seen directly. It remains, even now, a profound question whether the cost of proposing such very hypothetical objects as superstrings is sufficiently compensated by the benefit in understanding that the hypothesis brings." Here he insists the merit of Mach's critical attitude. In Postscript, however, the author stresses the legacy of Boltzmann's difficult victory over Mach in the modern idea of theoretical physics. Readers are thus made think by themselves about the merit and demerit of Mach's philosophy and physical hypotheses. The book would be interesting to both laypersons and working physicists.

Absolutely delightfull
The name "Boltzmann" is well known to students of the physical sciences. There are constants and equations that bear Boltzmann's name and Boltzmann's H-theorem relates the thermodynamic quantity, entropy, to statistics and mechanics. Boltzmann, not a particularly sympathetic figure, comes to life in this book through Lindley's effective device of comparing Boltzmann and his work with contemporary scientific personalities and thought. Lindley (Cambridge Univ.) shows how the contributions of Boltzmann placed the then-new science of thermodynamics on firm theoretical ground and also laid the foundations for the disciplines of statistical mechanics and, to a great extent, quantum mechanics. Lindley is a theoretical physicist with editorial experience on scientific journals and also the author of two other popular books on science. He brings to his subject a deep understanding of the scientific significance of Boltzmann's contributions and knowledge of the social, political, and scientific issues of Boltzmann's era. Too often the sciences are taught formally with little appreciation for the personalities and the evolution of the thought of those responsible for the results. Lindley's book corrects this for the crucial period when the atom was born and theoretical physics became a subject of its own. General readers; undergraduates through professionals.

An absolute delight
Just over 250 pages this is a good book that I would recommend for the average American who in my opinion is "dumbed down" when it comes to the basics of math and physics. The author, begins by reminding the reader that as even in the early 1900's a respected physicist and philosopher could make the comment "I don't believe that atoms exist" before an audience of ones colleagues and not meet with derision, ridicule or disdain, but instead receive nods of approval and thoughtful reflection and a hearing. And the book is a great study in how science is a tug of war at times. And how a great man like Boltzmann sought facts or what was real and that he really did stand alone. Yet he marched to his own drummer and didnt take to authority well.

Yet today atoms are not at all controversial, since scientist have not only proved they exist but that they are complex and made of sill smaller elements. But why was this Dr Boltzmann? Having seen his picture he was a handsome man. Tall dark and handsome to be exact. Wore glasses and was a quite man. He was born Feb. 20, 1844, in Vienna, Austria and died Sept. 5, 1906, in Duino, Italy. His 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 visible properties of matter (such as viscosity, thermal conductivity, and diffusion). As an avid atomist, Boltzmann's fervent belief in his work led him into many heated debates with his colleagues. While he had interests in philosophy were far reaching, even delving into the function of language; ultimately he was a theoretician and physicist. He did not consider himself a philosopher and was critical of philosophy as a science.

Around 1881, Boltzmann efforts were associated with J.C. Maxwell. Maxwell worked to try to explain the thermodynamics of gases. Boltzmann introduced the Ehrenfest urn Model, an example is the probability formulation in Markov chain terms. A discreet parameter stochastic process is a collection of random variable {X(t), t=0,1,2,3,..}. The values of X(t) are called the states of process. The collection of states is call the state space. The values of t usually represent points in time. The number of statis either finite or countable infinite. A discrete parameter stochastic process is called a Markov Chain if for any set of n time points t1tn, the conditional distribution of X(tn) given values for X(t1), X(t2),... X(tn) depends only on X(t(n-1)). It is expressed by

P[X(tn)<=xn\ X(t1)=x1,...X(t(n-1))=x(n-1)]

=P[X(tn) <=xn\ X(n-1)=x(n-1)].

A Marko Chain is said to be stationary if the value of the conditional probability P[X(t(n+1))= x(n+1)\X(tn)=xn] is independant on. This is for stationary Markov Chains. He was the first one to recognize the importance of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. Trivia: The Boltzmann constant has a value of 1.380662 * 10^-23 joules per kel vin.

And this is what the book is basically all about. The man. The genius and how he changed the world of math and physics. In Vienna Dr Boltzmann taught not only physics but in 1903 he also committed himself to teach a university course "Methods and General Theory of the Natural Sciences." Boltzmann constant was named after Lugwig Boltzmann, because he substantially contributed to the foundation and development of statistical mechanics, a branch of theoretical physics.

The author has been a theoretical physicist at Cambridge University and Fermi National Accelerator Labs and is also an editor at Nature, Science and Science New magazines.