| Pioneer | Publication | Reason |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||
 Jean Meslier (1664-1729) | On the day of his reaction existence, three copies, hand-penned, i.e. "self-published", of his The Testament, were found under his bed. This publication, which cites heavily from Michel Montaigne, launched the French enlightenment, via its influence on Voltaire, etc. | |
 Sadi Carnot (1796-1832)Date: 1824 | Printed 600 copies of his Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, at his own expense. One copy was presented before the Academie. There was a long and appreciative review of it in one journal, a brief notice in another, and an encomium by Nicholas Clement who recommended it to students. Other than this, it is said, for the next ten years the book went unnoticed. | (add?) |
 George Green (1793-1841) Date: 1828 | At age 35, a self-educated miller (read books via the Nottingham Subscription Library), having had almost no formal schooling, he self-published his 1828 “An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism” (51 copies), wherein starting from the work of Pierre Laplace (IQ=190), he introduced the concept of “potential function”, i.e. the potential as a function of Cartesian coordinates V(x,y,z), particularly the potential energy of an arbitrary static distribution of electric charges; the paper, which introduced now-standard mathematical entities, such as Green's function and Green's theorem, is said to mark the start of modern mathematical physics. [4] | Green thought the work wound not be accepted “coming from an unknown individual”. [4] |
 Robert Mayer (1814-1878)German physician and physicist Date: 1845 | His paper “On the Quantitative and Qualitative Determination of Forces” in which he stated the postulate that “motion is converted into heat”, one of the first statements of the conservation of energy, was sent to sent German physicist Johann Poggendorff to be published in his Annalen der Physik and Chemie, but was never published nor acknowledged receipt; not deterred, in 1845, Mayer published a small brochure, a fee he paid himself, titled “Organic Movement in Connection with Metabolism”, wherein he equated heat with mechanical effect and stated that the gas or fluid “serves only as a tool for effecting the transformation of the one force into the other.” [2] | Went he went to German physicist Philipp Jolly for consultation, explaining to him his theory that heat is due to motion and that heat and work are equivalent concepts, Jolly had great difficulty accepting this theory, and finally exclaimed: “but if that is true, then water should be warmed by merely shaking it.” Mayer left quietly, only to return several weeks later to Jolly’s room, exclaiming “and so it is”. This may have been one of the mindset reasons why Poggendorff rejected his first article, and he thus had to self-publish? |
 Willard Gibbs(1839-1903) | His series of article, were all published in journal of his brother-in-law, basically being self-published. | |
 Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894)German physicist and physician Date: 1847 | His memoir “On the Conservation of Force” (“Uber die Erhaltung der Kraft”), which presented one of the first versions of the conservation of energy (or conservation of force), depending on context, was rejected at Johann Poggendorff’s Annalen, and he had finally to publish the essay at his own expense. | His proposal of the reduction of all quantities to matter in motion based on the constancy of kraft (force), in a mathematical sense, combined with the Lagrangian tradition of rational mathematics, and then to formally extend the mathematics of the variational principle to heat and electromagnetism was regarded with skepticism as a curious novelty and just another ploy of metaphysics by the natural scientists. [3] |
 Libb Thims (c.1975-)American chemical engineer, electrical engineer, and thermodynamicist Date: 2007 | Published his two-volume Human Chemistry textbook, at his own expense, ordering a first print run of about 200 copies, of which have slowly been distributed to various key individuals and institutions, worldwide. | Development the subject of “human thermodynamics” was barricaded by the fact that the subject of “human chemistry”, the subject of treating humans as molecules, that form and break chemical bonds to each other, in the course of their chemical reactions to each other, was never before presented in a rigorous systematic manner. The presentation and decimation of the subject of human chemistry was an inevitable necessity (as a preliminary to a future subject of human chemical thermodynamics), just as his the subject of “chemistry” a prerequisite to the study of the subject of chemical thermodynamics. |
“Self-publishing is common to other great scientists with novel and original theories, such as French physicist Sadi Carnot, who self-published his 1824 Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, at his own expense, a book that would go on to initiate the science of thermodynamics.”— Libb Thims, American electrochemical engineering thermodynamicist, comment during the Moriarty-Thims debate (2009) [1]
“I stumbled onto your website by accident but I have to confess this might be one of the most stunning undiscovered intellectual achievements of the 21st century. I have browsed through your wiki and I cannot express how tragic it must be to a man in your position—to be a pioneering thinker yet to be rejected by an uptight academic community with neither the depth nor will to understand your unique work, defending their own turf like dogs. I can only compare you to the many other pioneering heroes of science, Newton (IQ=193-200), Einstein (IQ=160-225), Tesla (IQ=140-310), men who like you blazed own paths but were too victims of their own genius, only to be validated years after their death. Perhaps one day historians will look back and have a chuckle - that the pioneer of enthropology published by a vanity press in a book resembling a third rate romance.”— Steven Pierce, Canadian mathematical physicist and computer science (2009) [1]
