EINSTEIN, ALBERT. - EINSTEINS FOURTH PAPER.

Eine Theorie der Grundlagen der Thermodynamik;

Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1903. Contemp. hcloth. Some small nicks to spine. (=) "Annalen der Physik. Vierte Folge. Band 11. Herausgegeben von Paul Drude.". VIII,1144pp. and 6 plates. The Einstein paper: pp. 170-187. Internally fine and clean.

First edition of Einsteins fourth paper. In his paper from 1902, Einstein "says in his introduction that nobody has yet succeeded in deriving the conditions of thermal equilibrium and of the second law of thermodynamics from probability considerations, although Maxwell and Boltzmann came near to it. Willard Gibbs is not mentioned. In fact, Einstein's paper was written in ignorance of Gibbs paper published 1901. In the present paper, Einstein builds the theory on another basis not used by Gibbs, namely on the consideration of a single system in course of time (later called "Zeit-Gesamtheit", time assembly), and proves that this is equivalent to a certain virtual assembly of many systems, Gibb's micro-canonical assembly...Einstein at once proceeded to apply his theorems to a case of utmost importance, namely to systems of a size suited for demonstrating the reality of molecules and the correctness of the kinetic theory of matter."(Walter Alicke). - Weil No. 4.

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