Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844-1906)

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist. He was one of the greatest theoretical physicists, famed for his work in gas kinetic theory, heat and entropy.

He was born in the Landstrasse district of Vienna on the night of February 20, 1844. His father an Austrian government official, was born of a Protestant clockmaker from Berlin and his mother Catherina Pauernfeind, was Catholic.

Boltzmann received his primary education from a private tutor at home and from the Mittelschule in Linz. He stood out as a very good, industrious pupil, nearly always at the top of his class.

He entered the University of Vienna in 1863 and specialized in mathematics and physics, though he also took a number of courses in philosophy.

Josef Stefan, the acting director of physics institute, became Boltzmann main teacher in physics; in mathematics he learned most from Joseph Petzval, a highly original and stylistically elegant teacher and author.

Boltzmann published his first scientific article in 1865, received his PhD on his work of kinetic theory of gases in 1866, and his Habilitation or permission to teach in university in March 1868. In 1869, then only 25 years old, Boltzmann was appointed Ordinarius of mathematical physics at the University of Graz.

His arrival in Graz marked the start of a period of intense scientific activity culminated in 1872 in the publication, in the Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, of the paper with the hardly informative title of ‘Further researchers on the thermal equilibrium of gas molecules’.

In this paper that the celebrated equation called after Boltzmann was introduced.

He moved to Munich in 1891, then back to Vienna in 1894, when a Chair became vacant on the death of Stefan. In 1902, Boltzmann was appointed Professor for Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna.
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844-1906)

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany. Einstein contributed more than any other scientist since Sir Isaac Newton to our understanding of physical reality.

Einstein worked at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland from 1902 to 1909. During this period he completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time, without the benefit of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues.

The most well known of these works is Einstein's 1905 paper proposing "the special theory of relativity." He based his new theory on the principle that the laws of physics are in the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all frames of reference.

Later in 1905 Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent expressing it in the famous equation: E=mc2 (energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared). This equation became a cornerstone in the development of nuclear energy.

Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity, rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. He worked on at Princeton until the end of his life on an attempt to unify the laws of physics.
Albert Einstein