In 1925, Einstein made his last contribution to quantum theory (consider by many to be his last significant scientific contribution as well) with his work on the quantum ideal gas.
After 1925, Einstein turned his back forever on quantum mechanics, arguing that its probabilistic nature was a fundamental flaw.
If in 1917 Einstein truly saw the probabilistic nature as a shortcoming, later he would be less forgiving.
Clausius formulated much of the original ideas of his theory on entropy in 1854. However, it wasn’t until 1865 that he actually named his new property “entropy”.
Whereas the universe keeps energy at a constant (energy is conserved), it continues to increase the entropy. Therefore, no process that occurs will ever result in an overall decrease in the entropy of the universe. The universes’ tendency of maximizing entropy is reminiscent of “a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy” as stated by Thomson, and Clausius noted the connection.
In 1634, Galileo, now under guarded house arrest, and mourning the recent death of his beloved daughter, returned to his project of some twenty-five years prior to produce his final masterpiece Discourses on Two New Sciences.
A sound wave will often travel from one room to another spreading out though an adjacent doorway where it’s then heard. This is an example of the wave property known as diffraction.
In 1666, Newton bought his first prism with the motivation of disproving Descartes wave theory of light. In 1672, he gave a brief account of his findings, in the form of a letter, to the Royal Society, whereby – after a bit of convincing – it was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Although not unanimous, Newton’s work met with much praise. However, one critic’s words would resound with Newton, thus beginning a lifetime feud.
Robert Hooke (1635–1703), who was considered the expert on the subject in England, sent a lengthy critique. In short, it pretty much said Hooke had performed all the same experiments, drawn different conclusions, and that Newton was outright wrong. In 1704, Newton finally published a full account of his theory of light in Opticks. To be sure, Newton had already drafted a treatise covering much of this work by 1672,
A long time proponent of atoms, Boltzmann died unaware of Einstein’s landmark 1905 paper, which proved their existence.
The Maxwell distribution was the first time a physical process was described as a statistical/stochastic phenomenon.
