Ludwig Boltzmann

In the year 1872, when women were not allowed in Austrian universities, a young vibrant teacher of mathematics and physics Henriette von Aigentler was refused to audit lectures unofficially. Boltzmann asked her to appeal against the dictate, and it was successful.

In 1876, Ludwig married Henriette and they had three daughters and two sons.

In 1906, while Boltzmann was on a vacation with his family, he hung himself after an attack of depression.

On February 20th, 1844, Ludwig Boltzmann was born to a father who was a tax official, and mother Katharina Pauernfeind, who hailed from Salzburg. His grandfather was a clock manufacturer and had moved from Berlin to Vienna.

After Boltzmann was born, the family moved to Upper Austria to Wels and then to Linz where Ludwig attended high school. In the initial days, he was home-tutored and from a young age, the lad was interested in plants and collected butterflies.

Ludwig studied at the ‘University of Vienna’, where he received his PhD degree in 1866. His thesis was on kinetic theory of gases and his supervisor was Josef Stefan.

Ludwig became an assistant of Stefan and in the year 1866, he took several jobs as professors in physics and mathematics at Graz, Munich and Leipzig. The following year, he gave his inaugural speech as a lecturer.

In 1869, Boltzmann was appointed as a professor in theoretical physics in Graz, a post which he held for the next four years.

The same year he also spent a considerable amount of time in Heidelberg with Robert Bunsen and Königsberger.

In 1871, he worked closely with Gustav Kirchhoff and Helmholtz in Berlin. Two years later, he accepted a position for Mathematics in Vienna. However his stay was cut short, as he frequently moved places and came back to Graz again, this time in the department of experimental physics.

During the 1870s, Boltzmann published several papers, in which he explained that by applying law of mechanics, one can better explain the second law of thermodynamics. He also added that the theory of probability can be applied to the movement of atoms.

Boltzmann explained the second law of thermodynamics with statistical mechanics. He took his investigations further, and tried to work on the general law for energy distribution in various parts of the system. The study was conducted at specific temperature which ultimately led to Maxwell-Boltzmann law.

This eminent scientist was one of the few people of his time who have identified the potential of electromagnetic theory proposed by James Clerk Maxwell.