In thermodynamics, Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844-1906) was an Austrian physicist and thermodynamicist, of the Vienna school of thermodynamics, one of the central founders of statistical thermodynamics, developer of the probabilistic or logarithmic description of entropy, captured in the formula S = k ln W, and noted for his 1886 postulate that "life is a struggle for entropy". [1] In 1891, Boltzmann famously commented: “I see no reason why energy shouldn’t also be regarded as divided atomically.” [10] This view, later led German physicist Max Planck, in 1900, to postulate the quantum view of an energy element. In an 1886 lecture, Boltzmann gave his opinion that the nineteenth century will be remembered as the century of the ‘mechanical vision of nature’ and of ‘Darwin’s evolutionism’. [11]

Education
Boltzmann was awarded a doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1866 for a thesis on the kinetic theory of gases supervised by Josef Stefan. After obtaining his doctorate, he became an assistant to Stefan. Boltzmann later taught at Graz, moved to Heidelberg and then to Berlin, where he studied under German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz. [1] One of Boltzmann’s good friends and colleges at the University of Vienna was Joseph Loschmidt, noted for being the first to draw double and triple bonds in molecules, as found in his 1861 book Chemische Studien (Chemical Studies), and to calculate the size of air molecules (1865) using the kinetic theory of gases. [6]

Statistical thermodynamics
His theories on the statistical measurement of entropy in gas-phase systems are the base of logic used in statistical human thermodynamics. One of his more famous postulates/quotes, stated in 1886, is that life is a struggle for entropy: [2]

“The general struggle for existence of animate beings is not a struggle for raw materials – these, for organisms, are air, water and soil, all abundantly available – nor for energy, which exists in plenty in any body in the form of heat Q, but of a struggle for entropy S, which becomes available through the transition of energy from the hot sun to the cold earth.”

These famous statement later stimulated Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger to argue, in 1944, that that “life feeds on negative entropy.” [5] This statement, in turn, spawned a number of new terms, such as neg-entropy and neguentropy, as well as debates on the logic of this statement. According to researchers Eric Schneider and Dorian Sagan, for instance, in regards to the correctness of this statement, “except for the term entropy, which is better replaced with Gibbs free energy G, Boltzmann’s analysis is essentially modern.” [3] In his famous 1872 article ‘Further Studies on the Thermal Equilibrium of Gas Molecules’, Boltzmann concluded, based on his comparison of humans to molecules as discerned through a reading of English Historian Henry Buckle’s 1861 book History of Civilization, that: [4]

“Molecules are like to many individuals, having the most various states of motion, and the properties of gases only remain unaltered because the number of these molecules which on average have a given state of motion is constant.”

Anecdotes

See main: Thermodynamics anecdotes

In thermodynamics folklore, an oft-heard comment is that the second law has something to do with pouring a glass of water into the sea. This stems from Boltzmann who in 1870 told English physicist John Strutt that the second law of thermodynamics has the same truth as the assertion that you cannot recover a tumbler of water thrown into the sea. [7]

Attacks
Before receiving acclaim into the early 20th century, Boltzmann’s theoretical initially came under attack from many directions. In 1876, Austrian physical chemist Joseph Loschmidt, Boltzmann’s mentor at the Vienna school, pointed out the reversibility paradox, otherwise known as Loschmidt’s paradox, between reversible classical dynamics and irreversible thermodynamics; thus prompting Boltzmann to write his 1877 article “On the Relation of a General Mechanical Theorem to the Second Law of Thermodynamics” in efforts to reconcile the issue. [8]

In the mid 1890s, German mathematician Ernst Zermelo criticized the mathematical and philosophical foundations. Those in the school of energetics, Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, and French physicist Pierre Duhem, all criticized Boltzmann’s underlying atomic model, arguing essentially that atoms did not exist, and that thermodynamics need not be based on atoms. [9]

Later life

See main: Founders of thermodynamics and suicide

Boltzmann, who during his life had a difficult time vindicating his theories, particular the supposition that atoms existed, was one of the several founders of thermodynamics to take their own life.

References
1. Ludwig Boltzmann – Biographical Overview, Sam Houston State University, Texas.
2. Boltzmann, Ludwig. (1886). "The Second Law of Thermodynamics" (pgs. 14-32). In B. McGinness, ed., Ludwig Boltzmann: Theoretical physics and Philosophical Problems: Selected Writings. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1974.
3. Schneider, Eric D. and Sagan, Dorion. (2005). Into the Cool - Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life (pgs. 59-60). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
4. (a) Boltzmann, Ludwig. (1872). "Further Studies on the Thermal Equilibrium of Gas Molecules" (“Weitere Studien über das Wärmegleichgewicht unter Gasmolekülen.”) In Wisssenschaftliche Abhandlungen, ed. F. Hasenohrl, vol.1, pg. 317. J.A. Barth, Leipzig, 1909.
(b) Thims, Libb. (2008). The Human Molecule, (preview), (pg. 8-9). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
5. (a) Schrödinger, Erwin. (1944). What is Life? (ch. 6 “Order, Disorder, and Entropy). pgs. 67-75 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(b) What is Life? (1944 book in word doc download).
6. Capri, Anton Z. (2007). Quips, Quotes, and Quanta (ch. 1: Thermodynamics: Founders and Flounderers, pgs. 1-10) [PDF]. World Scientific.
7. Lindberg, David C., Porter, Roy, Jo Nye, Mary, and Numbers, Ronald. (2003). The Cambridge History of Science: the Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences (pgs. 494-95). Cambridge University Press.
8. Boltzmann, Ludwig. (1877). “On the Relation of a General Mechanical Theorem to the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (“Uber die Beziehung eines Allgemeine Mechanischen Satzes zum zweiten Hauptsatze der Warmetheorie”), Sitzungsberichte Akad. Wiss., Vienna, Part II, 75: 67-73.
9. Hokikian, Jack. (2002). The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World (pg. 39). Los Feliz Publishing.
10. Thermal and Kinetic Physics (F31ST1) – Nottingham University.
11. Fernández-Galiano, Luis and Carino, Gina (translator) (2000). Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy (pg. 37). MIT Press.

Further reading
● Boltzmann, Ludwig. (1878). “On Some Problems of the Mechanical Theory of Heat”, Philosophical Magazine: a Journal of Theoretical, Experimental and Applied Physics, 5(26): pgs. 236-37. Jul-Dec.
● Broda, Englebert. (1983). Ludwig Boltzmann: Man, Physicist, Philosopher. Ox Bow Press.
● Cercignani, Carlo. (1998). Ludwig Boltzmann - the Man Who Trusted Atoms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
● Lindley, David. (2001). Boltzmann's Atom - the Great Debate that Launched a Revolution in Physics. New York: The Free Press.

External links
● Ludwig Boltzmann – Wikipedia.
● Ludwig Boltzmann – Eric Weisstein’s World of Scientific Biolgraphy.