In human thermodynamics, Ingo Müller (1937-) is a German physicist and thermodynamicist noted for his socio-thermodynamics theories, as outlined in his 2002 paper Socio-thermodynamics – Integration and Segregation in a Population, of phenomena such as segregation or population mixing. [1] Muller gives his synopsis view of how thermodynamics applies to humanity as follows: [5]

“We firmly believe that thermodynamic ideas, in particular those of Clausius, may find an application outside of thermodynamics, even outside of physics, namely in the fields of economy and sociology.”

In 2007, Müller published A History of Thermodynamics - the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy, a long over-due and greatly-needed book in the field of thermodynamics.

Education
Muller began teaching thermodynamics in circa 1965 and has since taught thermodynamics in four countries (USA, Mexico, Italy, and Germany). His first thermodynamics textbook, among ten total books written in thermodynamics, was published in 1985. [4] His interests have been in all aspects of thermodynamics from the construction and operation of heat engines and refrigerators to the modelling of the thermo-mechanical behavior of shape memory allows, the swelling of poly-electrolytes, and the light scattering in extremely rarefied gases. He developed extended thermodynamics, which is essentially a thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes in rarefied gases; a theory characterized by attractive mathematical properties such as symmetric hyperbolic field equations. [2] In 2005, Müller became an Emeritus Professor of the Technical University Berlin.

Socio-thermodynamics

See main: socio-thermodynamics

In his 2005 book Entropy and Energy: A Universal Competition, Müller devotes an entire chapter to the subject of socio-thermodynamics. In this chapter, Müller goes through an example of a metaphorical system of hawks and doves competing for the same limited resource. He compares the segregation and mixing of the two populations to that of physico-chemical systems separations defined by phase diagrams. Through his analogies, he correctly correlates pressure-volume boundary work to that of the ‘part of the habitat lost’ and states that:

"Such analogies emphasize the point of view that physical or sociological systems of many individual elements have common properties, whether the elements are atoms and molecules or birds and (maybe) men."

Jacket cover to Muller's 2007 book A History of Thermodynamics.

One funny point, about the modeling of human social life through the difficult science of thermodynamics, as Müller states in his 2007 book A History of Thermodynamics: the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy, is that:

‘It is interesting to note that socio-thermodynamics is only accessible to chemical engineers and metallurgists. These are the only people who know phase diagrams and their usefulness. It cannot be expected, in our society, that sociologists will appreciate the potential of these ideas.’

Here we concur, in that socio-thermodynamics is obvious to the chemical engineer or other mathematically-trained scientists, such as physicists, but the explanation of this obviousness to others is not so easy.

References
1. (a) Müller, Ingo. (2002). Socio-thermodynamics – Integration and Segregation in a Population, P: Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics 14, 384-404, 2002.
(b) Symposium held in honor of Ingo Müller (2002) – Special symposium on continuum mechanics and thermodynamics.
2. Ingo Müller - Curriculum Vitae (PDF).
3. Müller, Ingo. (2007). A History of Thermodynamics: the Doctrine of Energy and Entropy. New York: Springer.
4. Müller, Ingo. (1985). Thermodynamics. Pitman.
5. Muller, Ingo. (2005). Energy and Entropy: A Universal Competition (socio-thermodynamics, pgs. 12, 203-221). Springer.

Further reading
● Muller, Ingo. (1971). Entropy, Absolute Temperature, and Coldness in Thermodynamics: Boundary Conditions in Porous Materials. Springer.
● Hutter, Kolumban. (2002). “Prof. Dr. h.c. Ingo Muller 65 years old: An appraisal of his contributions to Thermodynamics”, Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Vol. 14, Issue 1, pgs. 307.
● Muller, Ingo and Strehlow, Peter. (2004). Rubber and Rubber Balloons: Paradigms of Thermodynamics. Springer.
● Muller, Ingo, Muller, Wolfgang H. (2009). Fundamentals of Thermodynamics and Applications: With Historical Annotations and Many Citations from Avogadro to Zermelo. Springer.

External links
● Muller, Ingo (1936-) – WorldCat Identities.