Rudolf Clausius
By: Delaney Marrs
Background:
Major Contributions:
Rudolf Clausius became known as one of Europe's elite theoretical physicists. He gave the first view of the concept of "entropy", and also created the, now abandoned unit, Clausius (Cl).
1 Cl = 1 calorie/degree Celsius = 4.1868 Joules/Kelvin
He stated assumptions supporting the popular concept of calorie theory were wrong and then later defined them as the two laws of thermodynamics.
Continued...
Rudolf Clausius states, the First Law of Thermodynamics, is a statement of the conservation of energy with heat and work. He then states the Second Law is a statement about the direction of that conservation and the heat transfer.
He also gave the first mathematical version of the concept of entropy, is a measure of the amount of information it takes to know the complete state of an object, atom by atom. He brought mathematical approaches to molecular some of physics most challenging problems and advanced the field of Thermodynamics and laid a broad foundation of understanding.