24 Facts About Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist and philosopher.

Ludwig Boltzmann's father, Ludwig Georg Boltzmann, was a revenue official.

Ludwig Boltzmann's grandfather, who had moved to Vienna from Berlin, was a clock manufacturer, and Boltzmann's mother, Katharina Pauernfeind, was originally from Salzburg.

Ludwig Boltzmann received his primary education at the home of his parents.

Ludwig Boltzmann received his doctorate in 1866 and his venia legendi in 1869.

Ludwig Boltzmann worked closely with Josef Stefan, director of the institute of physics.

In 1869 at age 25, thanks to a letter of recommendation written by Josef Stefan, Ludwig Boltzmann was appointed full Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Graz in the province of Styria.

In 1873 Ludwig Boltzmann joined the University of Vienna as Professor of Mathematics and there he stayed until 1876.

On 17 July 1876 Ludwig Boltzmann married Henriette; they had three daughters: Henriette, Ida and Else ; and a son, Arthur Ludwig.

Ludwig Boltzmann went back to Graz to take up the chair of Experimental Physics.

Ludwig Boltzmann spent 14 happy years in Graz and it was there that he developed his statistical concept of nature.

Ludwig Boltzmann was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich in Bavaria, Germany in 1890.

In 1894, Ludwig Boltzmann succeeded his teacher Joseph Stefan as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna.

Ludwig Boltzmann spent a great deal of effort in his final years defending his theories.

Ludwig Boltzmann did not get along with some of his colleagues in Vienna, particularly Ernst Mach, who became a professor of philosophy and history of sciences in 1895.

Ludwig Boltzmann's position carried the day among other physicists who supported his atomic theories in the debate.

In 1900, Ludwig Boltzmann went to the University of Leipzig, on the invitation of Wilhelm Ostwald.

Ludwig Boltzmann's students included Karl Pribram, Paul Ehrenfest and Lise Meitner.

Ludwig Boltzmann had a long-running dispute with the editor of the preeminent German physics journal of his day, who refused to let Ludwig Boltzmann refer to atoms and molecules as anything other than convenient theoretical constructs.

Ludwig Boltzmann's paradigm was an ideal gas of N identical particles, of which Ni are in the ith microscopic condition of position and momentum.

Ludwig Boltzmann could be considered one of the forerunners of quantum mechanics due to his suggestion in 1877 that the energy levels of a physical system could be discrete.

The Ludwig Boltzmann equation was developed to describe the dynamics of an ideal gas.

Ludwig Boltzmann accomplished the feat of showing that the second law of thermodynamics is only a statistical fact.

Ludwig Boltzmann was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1888 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1899.