EINSTEIN, ALBERT.

Zur allgemeinen molekularen Theorie der Wärme;

Leipzig, J.A. Barth, 1904. Contemp. hcloth, tears to hinges at upper part of spine. "Annalen der Physik. Vierte Folge. Band 14. Herausgegeben von Paul Drude". VIII,1040 pp. and 3 plates. The Einstein paper: pp. 354-362. Internally clean and fine. The whole volume offered.

First edition of Einstein's fifth work. "It was in this last of his early series of papers, before the announcement of the theory of relativity in 1905, that Einstein introduced a new theme. Einstein asked for the physical significance of the constant now known as Boltzmann's konstant 'k'.It was already well known from the theory of the ideal gas that 'k' was simply related to the gas constant 'R' and to Avogardo's number, the number of molecules in a gram-molecular weight of any substance. Einstein showed that 'k' entered into still another basic equation of the statistical theory, the expression for the mean square fluctuation of the energy about its average value. This meant that 'k' determines the thermal stability of a system...the paper contains the seeds of much of his later work...(Walter Alicke). - Weil No 5.

Order-nr.: 38818