Rudolf Clausius: biography and contributions of this German physicist and mathematician.

A summary of the life of Rudolf Clausius, famous for being a pioneer in the study of thermodynamics.

Considered as one of the founding fathers of thermodynamics, Rudolf Clausius is one of the most prominent figures not only of the German physics of the 19th century, but also of the European science of his century.

Very skilled in both physics and mathematics, he was an example to be followed by other scientists such as the Scotsman James Maxwell, one of the scholars of electromagnetic theory.

Below you will find a biography of Rudolf Clausius in which we will see which were his main contributions to the field of physics.

Brief biography of Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Clausius was a German physicist and mathematician known for being one of the founders of thermodynamics, being the one who formulated the second of the laws that make up these principles.. He, together with other illustrious characters such as the British physicists William Thomson, Lord Kelvin and James Joule developed these laws of physics, being the French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot who is credited with having formulated the first of the laws of thermodynamics.

The most relevant studies of Rudolf Clausius dealt with the effect of heat on different fluids and materials, proposing the kinetic theory on the behavior of atoms and molecules.

Birth and early years

Rudolph Julius Emmanuel Clausius was born on January 2, 1822 in Köslin, Prussia, now Koszalin, Poland.. His father was a Protestant and was in charge of a small school where the young Rudolf Clausius would attend during his first formative years.

Later he entered the gymnasium (German high school) in the city of Stettin, now Szczecin in Poland, where he continued his education.

University education

In the year 1840 he entered the University of Berlin.. There he began to attend history classes, but soon changed that subject for science and had as teachers the physicist Georg Simon Ohm and the mathematician Richard Dedekind.

Studying mathematics and physics, Clausius discovered that these were branches of knowledge that he was particularly good at, making them his profession when he finished studying in Berlin in 1844.

Subsequently Clausius studied at the University of Halle, where he obtained a doctorate in physics in 1847. thanks to his work on the optical effects produced on the planet Earth as a consequence of the existence of the atmosphere. Although this work presented some errors in terms of approach, it served Clausius to demonstrate that he had great gifts for mathematics and physics, making a name for himself among the German scientific community.

Early scientific research

Rudolf Clausius's first experimental ventures began in 1849 with the study of the laws governing the relationship between pressure and temperature. Subsequently, he devoted himself to the study of different substances and the temperature at which they boil, drawing the first boiling curves..

His life would begin to take on special relevance in the scientific field of his country from 1850, when he obtained a position as professor of physics at the Royal School of Engineering and Artillery in Berlin, where he would remain until 1855. In addition to this position, Rudolf Clausius also served at the University of Berlin as a privatdozent, a professor who could teach at the university but whose fees were paid directly by his students rather than by the institution.

The highlight of this period of Rudolf Clausius's life was the publication in 1850 of the the publication in 1850 of his most important work: "On the forces of motion caused by heat".".

Developing the kinetic theory

In 1855 Clausius left Germany and obtained a teaching position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Two years later focused on studying in the field of kinetic theory, experimented at this time with the concept of the "mean free path of a particle", a term that refers to the distance between two encounters, one after the other, of molecules that make up a gas.a term that refers to the distance between two encounters, one after the other, of the molecules that make up a gas. This contribution of Clausius would be very relevant to the field of physics of his time.

Rudolf Clausius would remain at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology for several years, where he would teach physics. He would change locations in 1867, moving to Wurzburg, where he would also serve as a professor until 1869 and obtain a membership in the Royal Society of London. a membership in the Royal Society of London in 1868.He became a member of the Royal Society of London in 1868, as his fame and research were already known throughout Europe. He would go to the University of Bonn to teach physics, an institution where he would work for the rest of his life.

He was working in Bonn when, at the age of 50, the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) broke out. During the conflict he organized, together with several of his students, a volunteer ambulance corps.. As a result of his involvement in the war, Clausius suffered a leg injury, which caused him great discomfort for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, the injury brought him the recognition of the German society and, thanks to his heroic action, Rudolf Clausius received the Iron Cross.

Last years and death

During the last years of his life, Rudolf Clausius devoted himself to his children and put research on the back burner.. In addition, with the war wound suffered during the war he could not move easily, making him prefer to stay in Bonn instead of traveling as much as he had done in his youth. Nevertheless, Clausius continued to teach at the University of Bonn until his death.

Rudolf Clausius died on August 24, 1888 in Bonn, Germany, at the age of 66.. His first wife, Adelheid Rimpau, had died in 1875, leaving him to care for their six children, and Clausius remarried in 1886, this time to Sophie Stack with whom he had a son.

Recognition of this physicist and mathematician

In 1870 Rudolf Clausius was awarded the Huygens Medal and, in 1879, he received the Copley Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of Physicists and Mathematicians.The Copley Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of London to those who have made important contributions in the field of biology or physics.

In 1878 he was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and, in 1882, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Würzburg. In 1883 he received the Poncelet Prize, awarded by the French Academy of Sciences to all scientists who have made significant contributions to the sciences in general. Rudolf Clausius has continued to receive honors long after his death. In 1935, a crater on the Moon was named after him: the Clausius crater.

Scientific contributions of Rudolf Clausius

Rudolf Clausius made several contributions to physics. The following are the most outstanding aspects of his discoveries and theories.

Kinetic theory of gases

In 1857 he published the first complete theory of the kinetic theory of matter.. He used statistical mechanics to establish an ideal model for the structure of gases. Applying laws of mechanics, Clausius deduced the external or macroscopic behavior of these gases from hypotheses about the statistical behavior of the molecules of these fluids.

He deduced that, because molecular collisions occur between molecules in motion and with elasticity, at every instant in the interior of the gas there will be molecules moving in all directions and at all possible velocities.. The total translational energy of these molecules gives the measure of the heat content of the gas, and their kinetic energy depends directly on the temperature of the gas.

Clausius' work on the individual molecules of gases is considered to have been crucial to the conception of the kinetic theory of gases. The kinetic theory was originally developed by James Maxwell in 1859, but based most notably on the work of Rudolf Clausius.. Curiously, this same theory was criticized by Clausius, something that served Maxwell to update his kinetic theory in 1867.

Another of Clausius' contributions in this field was to develop a criterion to differentiate between atoms and molecules. According to him, gas molecules were complex bodies, with constituent parts that move. Today, the idea of a molecule is that of a particle composed of other atoms, which is very common in gases such as oxygen, nitrogen or hydrogen, and also in other substances such as water or ozone.

Second law of thermodynamics

Along with other great scientists of his time, Rudolf Clausius is considered one of the founding fathers of thermodynamics.. He is credited with proposing the second law of these principles, which states that heat can never pass by itself from a colder body to a hotter one.

This principle, also called the principle of entropy, a concept that he himself introduced and defined in 1865, states that, in practice, the technique of the process of passing heat from a body at a higher temperature to another that is at a lower temperature cannot be carried out inversely without permanent modifications in the environment.

One of the deductions of this principle is that the energy released when the temperature decreases from Ta to Tb is that it is not completely transformed into mechanical energyand the energy yield of this transformation is at most 1-Tb/Ta. This solved one of the main problems of the physics of his time, with scientists theorizing about whether or not it was possible to completely convert heat energy into mechanical work.