Carathéodory's axiomatic foundations of thermodynamics
Fundamentos axiomáticos de la termodinámica (Carathéodory)
- Date
- 1909 · confidence high
- Place
- Hanover, Germany
- Credited to
- Constantin Carathéodory
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
He founded thermodynamics on a single axiom of adiabatic inaccessibility, without heat engines or cycles. The existence of entropy and absolute temperature follows from it.
The paper appeared in Mathematische Annalen in 1909; Carathéodory was then in Hanover and soon moved to Breslau (1910). Max Born popularised it. Contemporaries were partly sceptical of its physical character.
What it led to
- mathematical formulation of thermodynamics
- the thermodynamics of Giles and of Lieb-Yngvason