Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann
1844–1906, Erdberg, Vienna, Austrian Empire, Duino, near Trieste, Austria-Hungary
Austrian theoretical physicist who developed statistical mechanics and explained the second law of thermodynamics through microscopic probability.
Boltzmann studied at the University of Vienna and held posts in Graz, Munich, and Vienna. Building on Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases, he brought statistical methods into physics and developed the molecular velocity distribution now known as the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution.
He related entropy to the number of possible microscopic states through S = k log W and developed the H-theorem to explain the tendency of a dilute gas toward equilibrium. His probabilistic ideas were debated in his time but became foundational to modern statistical mechanics.
Workplaces: University of Graz, University of Vienna, University of Munich
Austria