A Biography of Professor Bol

This post is a review of the book Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms by Carlo Cercignani (329 pages), and includes a preface by Roger Penrose. Boltzmann was one of the all time great physicists, and the founder of the discipline of statistical mechanics. He showed how to quantify the second law of thermodynamics, with the equation named after him. He was the first to give a statistical definition of entropy, a formula famously inscribed on his gravestone. He was also a philosopher who anticipated the theories of Kuhn and Darwin.

The book is part biography, part popular science, part a description of Boltzmann's contemporary scientists, part a transcription of Boltzmann's visit to California in his own words, and partly some substantial technical appendices with numerous equations.

The biographical part is written with detail and feeling. Vienna, as one of the great cities of the world figures in the text as a fertile ground for Boltzmann's upbringing. He attended the University of Vienna (the book seems to suggest that Boltzmann did not write a thesis; but he did, on the kinetic theory of gases). His doctoral advisor was Stefan; together they have a law named after them.

As a professional academic, Boltzmann worked at the universities of Graz, Munich, Vienna and Leipzig. In Graz he lived on a farm, from which his Alsatian dog descended to the university around noon after which they would go off together for lunch. The blackboard on which Boltzmann wrote in Vienna was used by Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger in his book Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation.

Boltzmann was in touch with scientists such as Loschmidt, Bunsen, Kirchoff, Ostwald, Lord Rayleigh and Helmholtz. (The title of this post comes from the abbreviated name for Boltzmann used by a visiting scientist from Japan; the visitor also referred to Helmholtz as Professor Hel). Among Boltzmann's distinguished students were Ehrenfest, Meitner, Nernst, and Arrhenius (the last two received Nobels in chemistry). Schrodinger and Wittgenstein both had wanted to study with him, but were too late. Boltzmann's dazzling ability as a lecturer, his polymathic interests and his delicate sensibilities (a poem by him is quoted in the book) prefiguring his mental health struggles are emphasized in the book.

On the scientific side, the book recounts the status of mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and heat just before Boltzmann. This is followed by a detailed exposition of kinetic theory, from initial considerations of heat and energy, to Boltzmann's work, the objections by Mach, Loschmidt and Zermelo, the contributions of Maxwell, the implications for the irreversibility of time, the philosophical criticisms of Popper and Feyerabend, the extensions of Gibbs, and the mathematical proofs of Birkhoff and von Neumann. Overall, it is a grand sweep of many powerful ideas that touch upon larger philosophical issues such as time, irreversibility, the atomic nature of reality and free will.

Among the trivia I picked up I learnt that Lenin approved of Boltzmann, who then became an exemplar of scientific materialism in the former Soviet Union. Boltzmann traveled to US several times; the closest he came to Rochester was Buffalo.

Boltzmann's early and tragic death by his own hand is addressed in some detail; we also get to learn that suicide was apparently not uncommon amongst Viennese intellectuals of the time.

Summary

The book is of reasonable length and written with clarity. A substantial amount of research has gone into it. Those looking for popular science will not be disappointed; neither will those who are searching for more technical detail. The issues that Boltzmann wrestled with and the concepts he gave us are both given good treatment.