"PLANCK'S FIRST GREAT SCIENTIFIC ACCOMPLISHMENT" (EINSTEIN)

PLANCK, MAX.

Ueber das Princip der Vermehrung der Entropie.

Leipzig, Barth, 1887. 8vo. Bound in contemporary half cloth with gilt lettering to spine. In "Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Hrsg. von G. Wiedemann", Neue Folge, Bd. XXXII". Entire volume offered. Title page and first leaf of content page detached and with marginal tears. Otherwise a fine copy. Pp. 462-503. [Entire volume: VIII, 704 pp. + 5 folded plates].

First appearance of Planck's seminal paper on entropy carrying the general title "On the principles of Increase of Entropy" in which he applied the second law of thermodynamics to chemical problems. The paper is part of the 4 paper series on the subject.

"His goal was, as he said in the first paper of the series, to carry further the "grand generalization" of Helmholtz, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and others: like the first principle of the mechanical heat theory, the second, the "Carnot-Clausius", principle applies not only to heat phenomena but to all kinds of physical and chemical phenomena; and because the second principle applies not only to reversible processes but also to irreversible, or "natural", processes, it applies to all processes whatsoever..."(Jungnickel and McCormach "Intellectual Mastery of Nature, vol. 2, pp. 52 ff.)

What Einstein admired and called Planck's "first great scientific discovery" was the generality of its formulas which contain all that can be derived from pure thermodynamic principles. Einstein referred to the third paper in this series with the title "Gesetze des Eintritts beliebiger thermodynamischer und chemischer Reactionen"

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