In human thermodynamics, Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) was a German physical chemist noted for his 1902 "energy theory of culture"; his 1906 book Individuality and Immortality, on the subject of what the science of energetics has to say about death and human individual (cessation thermodynamics); for his 1909 book Energetic Bases of Social Studies; for his 1912 book on the postulate of the "energetic imperative", and for being awarded 1909 Nobel Prize in thermodynamics; and is considered the founder of the "school of energetics" [1] Ostwald, supposedly, was the one who introduced the phrase “perpetual motion of the second kind” referring to those perpetual motion machines that seek to violate the second law of thermodynamics. [7]

Education
Ostwald graduated from the University of Tartu, Estonia, in 1875, received his PhD in chemistry there in 1878 under the guidance of Russian biochemist Carl Schmidt (a student of German chemist Justus von Liebig). After a period of being a schoolmaster, he became professor of chemistry at Riga Polytechnic Institute in 1881. In 1887, he became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Leipzig, remaining there until 1906. [11]

Catalysts
Ostwald was the first to realize that a catalyst acts without altering the energy relations of the reaction, and that it usually speeds up a reaction by lowering the activation energy. [11]

Natural philosophy
In 1901, Ostwald gave a seven part lecture series on "natural philosophy", in which he applied energy and entropy logic to human mental life. [9] The main points of Ostwald's theory were summarized and criticized in the 1903 article “The Theory of Energetics and its Philosophical Bearings” by American philosopher John Hibben. [10]

Physical chemistry
Beginning in 1885, Ostwald published Lehrbuh der Allgemeinen Chemie (Textbook of General Chemistry), the first textbook on physical chemistry and in 1887, together with Dutch chemist Jacobus van't Hoff, founded Zeitschrift fur Physikalische Chemie (Journal of Physical Chemistry) the first periodical in physical chemistry. [3]

Energetics
In the 1890s, Ostwald, who had recently translated American mathematical engineer Willard Gibbs' 1876 On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances into French, styled Gibbs as the "founder of chemical energetics". [2] The term 'human energetics', a near synonym to 'human thermodynamics', seems to have been attributed to Ostwald's 1909 book Gross Manner. [8]

The school of energetics, existing from 1890 to 1908, is a set of logic, attributed to German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (the founder) and Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, that rejected the atomic hypothesis focusing instead on the law of conservation of energy and a belief that macroscopic energy levels were the only reality. [5] The seed of belief may trace to the 1887 book The Doctrine of Energy by German physicist Georg Helm, a work read by Ostwald. With the discovery of the atom, between 1897 and 1909, this school, however, soon became defunct.

Economic thermodynamics

See main: economic thermodynamics

In 1907, Ostwald incorporated thermodynamics, or energetics specifically, into a general theory of economic development. Ostwald reasoned that energy was the sole universal generalization, in that energy processes underlie all circumstances. Based on this hypothesis, Ostwald theorized that for any event in the universe it is always possible to state an equation, between two time intervals, such as to quantify the difference between the energies that have disappeared and those newly arrived. [6] This, coincidently, is the methodology currently used to quantify energetic reactions in chemistry, namely the calculation of the before and after conditions in reactions.

Students
That coinage of the term "chemical potential" has been attributed to Cornell physical chemist Wilder Dwight Bancroft, a Ph.D. student of Ostwald who introduced the term in the 1890s. [3] American physical chemist Gilbert Lewis worked as an instructor at Harvard for a year before taking a traveling fellowship, studying under the physical chemists Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig and Walther Nernst at Göttingen. [4]

References
1. (a) Ostwald, Wilhelm. (1906). Individuality and Immortality, (pg. 7). New York: Riverside Press.
(b) Kragh, Helge. (2008). Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology, (pg. 229). Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
(c) Ostwald, Wilhelm. (1909). Energetic Bases of Cultural Studies (Energetische Grundlagen der Kulturwissenschaften). Leipzig: Duncker.
2. Willard Gibbs - Encyclopedia Britannica article (1910).
3. (a) Wilhelm Ostwald: the “Bruke” (Bridge) and other Connections to Other Bibliographic Activities at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (PDF), 9-pages, by Thomas Hapke, [ChemHeritage.org]
(b) Baierlein, Ralph. (2000). “The Elusive Chemical Potential”, American Association of Physics Teachers, Oct.
4. Edsall, J. T. (1974). "Some notes and queries on the development of bioenergetics. Notes on some "founding fathers" of physical chemistry: J. Willard Gibbs, Wilhelm Ostwald, Walther Nernst, Gilbert Newton Lewis". Mol. Cell. Biochem. Nov. 5 (1-2): 103–12.
5. (a) Loeb, Leonard B. (2004). The Kinetic Theory of Gases (pg. 6). Dover.
(b) Feuer, Lewis S. (1982). Einstein and the Generations of Science (pg. 332). Transactions Publishers.
(c) Porter, Neil A. (1998). Physics in Conflict (pg. 88). CRC Press.
6. (a) Ostwald, W. (1907). Modern Theory of energetics. Monist, 17: 480-515.
(b) Ostwald, W. (1911). Efficiency. The Independent, 71: 867-71.
7. Hokikian, Jack. (2002). The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World (pg. 24). Los Feliz Publishing.
8. (a) W.R. (1909). “How to Diagnose Genius: A Study of Human Energetics”, Nature, pgs. 121-22, Jul 29.
(b) Ostwald, Wilhelm. (1909). Gross Manner. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellshaft.
9. (a) Ostwald, Wilhelm. (1910). Natural Philosophy. Henry Holt and Co.
(b) Ostwald, Wilhelm. (1901). Naturphilosophie (vol 1-7). Leipzig.
10. Hibben, John Grier. (1903). “The Theory of Energetics and its Philosophical Bearings”, The Philosophical Review, 12: 175-77.
11. Laidler, Keith J. (1993). The World of Physical Chemistry (pg. 212). Oxford University Press.

Further reading
● Ostwald Wilhelm. (1907). “The Modern Theory of Energetics”, The Monist, 17: 511.

External links
● Wilhelm Ostwald – Wikipedia.