In science, the history or origin of American chemical engineer Libb Thims' efforts in the development of the sciences of human chemistry and human thermodynamics trace to his circa 1995 years as a chemical engineering student at the University of Michigan and his curiosity as to how the spontaneity criterion of chemical thermodynamics applies to the successfulness of mate selection or prediction in the action of love the chemical reaction.

In the years to follow, Thims began to seek a thermodynamic understanding of the human life process, especially as thermodynamics relates to mate selection and the nature of love. Thims interest in this connection began in about 1995 centered around the ellusive connection between the scientific nature of desire, as captured in American evolutionary psychologist David Buss' 1994 book The Evolution of Desire, and the spontaneity criterion of chemical thermodynamics: [1]

ΔG < 0 (spontaneous or energetically “favored” reaction)

as Thims was learning it in chemical engineering thermodynamics at the University of Michigan. These two aspects functioned as fundamental anchor points in the mind of Thims.

Overview
Thims originally had developed his interest or rather curiosity about the potential chemical thermodynamic operation of human life in 1995, while an undergraduate chemical engineering student in a senior level thermodynamics class at the University of Michigan, learning the subject of chemical engineering thermodynamics, according to the textbook of American chemical engineer Stanley Sandler. At one point, during lectures, Thims had the urge to raise his hand in class and ask how chemical thermodynamics applies to predictions of human relationships, but for whatever reason he kept mum and instead sought to figure out the subject on his own.

During this course, he began to wonder if anyone had ever applied the logic of chemical reaction prediction, as embodied in standard thermodynamic tables of free energies, enthalpies, and entropies, to the extrapolative prediction of human chemical reactions, such as between potential intimate pairs in reproductive reactions?

The answer to this question, as Thims discovered in 2006, discovered through a trail of clues, beginning with footnote number 2.5 of Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine's 1984 book Order Out of Chaos, was that German polymath Johann von Goethe (IQ = 210) figured this out in 1809, although through the logic of affinity tables (an antecedent to free energy tables). [2] In any event, in the years to follow his thermodynamics classes, having never before read anything about his previously, Thims began his search of the literature as a sort of passing hobby.

For the next several years the situation remained as such, with the logic of the situation, i.e. how chemical thermodynamics, particularly the Gibbs free energy equation:

∆G = ∆H – T∆S

relates to mate selection, being a personal and confusing riddle of sorts. On November 15, 2001, at 3:00 AM, however, while up memorizing anatomy and while reading Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which contains discussions on changes in the entropy of the human central nervous system as one reads a book, Thims solved, as a first approximation, the Gibbs free energy equation's applicability to the basic human reaction mechanism, namely:

A + B → C

in which A and B are a man and a woman, at the contact point (or collision point) of their relationship, i.e. the day one first sights the other, and C is a 15-year old child. About a month later, Thims decided it would be of interest to society to write up a brief synopsis of this logic. This resulted in the publication of a very-crude, three-volume book on Human Thermodynamics, written between 2001 and 2005, several copies of which were distributed locally around Chicago for feedback.

This feedback, among other argumentative interactions in 2005 and 2006, made it apparent to Thims that for any successful book publication of the subject of the "thermodynamics of human life" to be digestible to the average person, firstly there would need to be a standardized textbook on the fact that the human is a "molecule", that there is such a thing as a "human chemical reaction", or that the "human chemical bond" is the same as any other chemical bond, etc. In other words, although the "chemistry of love" is question that even young children wonder about and also is a cover-story topic, no chemist has ever written a standard textbook on this basic subject. Thus, in 2006 and early 2007, Thims wrote a standardized 824-page textbook on human chemistry.

In sum, beginning in mid 1995 and after about dozen-years of reading and research, with having had amassed a personal science library of over 1,000 books and textbooks (over 250 of which are thermodynamics-related), Thims has slowly mentally developed some of the main aspects of both human chemistry and human thermodynamics.

See also
● Human Chemistry (textbook) (origin)

References
1. Buss, David M. (1994). The Evolution of Desire - Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books.
2. Prigogine, Ilya. (1984). Order Out of Chaos – Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (footnote 2.5 (on Newton's chemical affinity): “B.J. Dobbs [The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy, 1975] also exampled the role of the ‘mediator’ by which two substances are made ‘sociable’. We may recall here the importance of Goethe’s Elective Affinities. For what concerns chemistry, Goethe was not far from Newton.” pg. 319). New York: Bantam Books.