List of Important Publications in Physics - Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics

See also: Thermodynamics, History of thermodynamics, Statistical mechanics, and List of notable textbooks in statistical mechanics

• Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1798). "An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat which is Excited by Friction". Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society: 102.

Observations of the generation of heat during the boring of cannons led Rumford to reject the caloric theory and to contend that heat was a form of motion.

• Carnot, Sadi (1824) (in French). Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres à développer cette puissance . Paris: Bachelier. http://books.google.com/books?id=YcY9AAAAMAAJ.

• —; Thurston, Robert Henry (editor and translator) (1890). Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat and on Machines Fitted to Develop That Power. New York: J. Wiley & Sons. (full text of 1897 ed.))
• —; E. Clapeyron; R. Clausius (2005). Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire – and other Papers on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Edited with an introduction by E. Mendoza. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-44641-7.

• Helmholtz, Hermann (1882). "Ueber die Thermodynamik der chemischer Vorgänge " (in German). Sitzungsbericht der Akademi der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.

• — (1888). "On the thermodynamics of chemical processes". Physical Memoirs Selected and Translated from Foreign Sources 1: 43–97. http://books.google.com/books?id=8lxMAAAAMAAJ&dq=Die%20Thermodynamic%20Chemischer%20Vorgange%2C%20Helmholtz&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false.

• Gibbs, J. Willard (1875–1878). On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances. Connecticut Acad. Sci.. ISBN 0-8493-9685-9. Reprinted in:
  • — (October 1993). The Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs (Vol. 1). Ox Bow Press. ISBN 0-918024-77-3.
  • — (February 1994). The Scientific Papers of J. Willard Gibbs (Vol. 2). Ox Bow Press. ISBN 1-881987-06-X.

Between 1876 and 1878 Gibbs wrote a series of papers collectively entitled "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances", considered one of the greatest achievements in physical science in the 19th century and the foundation of the science of physical chemistry. In these papers Gibbs applied thermodynamics to the interpretation of physicochemical phenomena and showed the explanation and interrelationship of what had been known only as isolated, inexplicable facts. Gibbs' papers on heterogeneous equilibria included: some chemical potential concepts; some free energy concepts; a Gibbsian ensemble ideal (basis of the statistical mechanics field); and a phase rule.

• Einstein, Albert (1905). "Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen " (in German). Ann. Phys. 17 (549). http://www.zbp.univie.ac.at/dokumente/einstein2.pdf.

In this publication Einstein covered his study of Brownian motion, and provided empirical evidence for the existence of atoms.

• Metropolis, N.; Rosenbluth, A.W.; Rosenbluth, M.N.; Teller, A.H.; Teller, E. (1953). "Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines". Journal of Chemical Physics 21 (6): 1087–1092. Bibcode 1953JChPh..21.1087M. doi:10.1063/1.1699114.

Introduces the Metropolis Monte Carlo method with periodic boundary conditions and applies it to the numerical simulation of a fluid.

• Kadanoff, Leo P. (1966). "Scaling laws for Ising models near T_c". Physics 2: 263.

Introduces the real space view on the renormalization group, and explains using this concept some relations between the scaling exponents of the Ising model.

• Wilson, Kenneth G. (1974). "The renormalization group: critical phenomena and the Kondo problem". Rev. Mod. Phys. 47 (4): 773–840. http://prola.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v47/i4/p773_1.

Application of the renormalization group to the solution of the Kondo problem. The author was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982 for this work.