DEBYE, PETER. - THE DEBYE-TEMPERATURE.

Zur Theorie der spezifischen Wärmen.

(Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1912). No wrappers. In "Annalen der Physik", IV Folge, Bd. 39, No 14.Pp. 705-1072, textillustr. (entire issue ("Heft 14 (No. 14) offered). Debye's paper: pp. 789-839. Clean and fine but inner margins punched, with holes after binding strings.

First appearance of Debye's second paper.

"In his second outstanding paper (the offered item) Debye treated a solid as a system of vibrating atoms and modified Einstein's theory of specific heats, which had been only partially successful. He showed that the solid could be characterized by a complete spectrum of eigen-frequencies and that the specific heat of a monatomic solid was a universal function of the ratio theta/T, were theta is a tempature characteristic of the particular solid and T is the absolute tempature. Now commonly called the Debye temperature, theta could be calculated from the elastic constants of the solid. The Debye equation, involving the then recently developed quantum theory, gave agreement with observed specific heat values. Aside from a numerical factor, it differed from the Einstein equation in containg both the compressibility and and Poisson's ratio." - Dictionary of Scientific Biography, volume 3, p.619.

Debye received the 1936 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to our knowledge of molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments and on the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases".

Order-nr.: 43540