Pioneers and Engineers

Emile Hilaire Amagat (1841-1915) published The Laws of Gases in 1899 which contained results of extensive experiments with gases under very high pressures. The “Law of Additive Volumes,” that “the volume of a gas mixture is equal to the sum of the volumes of all constituents at the same temperature and pressure as the mixture” bears his name, as does the unit of the volume per mole of ideal gas: 1 Amagat = 22.414 liters per mole at standard temperature and pressure.

Apollo 11 Mission : The first astronauts to achieve a lunar landing were Neil Armstrong, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins. On July 20, 1969 at 4:18 pm EDT, Armstrong, and Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon in the lunar module Eagle, and Armstrong reported "The Eagle Has Landed." They had detached from the Apollo 11 craft in lunar orbit leaving behind the command module Columbia, where astronaut Collins remained. At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong, descending from Eagle's ladder and touching one foot to the Moon's surface, announced: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." They left the lunar surface at 1:54 p.m., July 21, rejoined Columbia, and returned safely to Earth.

Neil Armstrong (1930- ) served as a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952 and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Purdue University in 1955. He joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1955. His first assignment was with the NACA Lewis (now NASA Glenn) Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. For the next 17 years, he was an engineer, test pilot, astronaut and administrator for NACA and its successor agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). As a research pilot at NASA's Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, he piloted many pioneering high speed aircraft, including the 4000-mph X-15. He has flown over 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters and gliders.

Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr.(1930- ) received a bachelor of science degree in 1951 from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a doctorate of science in Astronautics from MIT. His thesis was "Guidance for Manned Orbital Rendezvous." Prior to joining NASA, he flew 66 combat missions in F-86's while on duty in Korea, shooting down two MiG-15 fighters. He flew F-100's as a flight commander at Bitburg, Germany. In March 1972, Aldrin retired from Air Force active duty after 21 years of service.

Michael Collins (1930- ) received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1952. He chose an Air Force career following graduation and served as an experimental flight test officer at the Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards Air Force Base, California, and tested performance, stability and control characteristics of Air Force aircraft - primarily jet fighters. He left NASA in January 1970, and is Director of the National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.

Amadeo Avogadro (1776-1856) was born and died in Turin, Italy. He was part of a family of distinguished lawyers and graduated in ecclesiastical law at age 20. He also was interested in the natural sciences and in 1800 he began private studies in physics and mathematics. In 1809, he started teaching the natural sciences in high school and there wrote a note declaring what is now known as Avogadro's law, that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules. The note was published on July 14^TH. In 1820, Avogadro became the first chair of mathematical physics at Turin University. He had six children and was reputed to be a religious man but also a discreet lady's man. Because of alleged political actions, Avogadro was removed as professor at Turin University (officially, the University was "very glad to allow this interesting scientist to take a rest from heavy teaching duties, in order to be able to give a better attention to his researches"). Increasing acceptance of both revolutionary ideas and Avogadro's work led to his reinstatement in 1833.

Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782), working with Leonard Euler, found the relationship between fluid velocity and pressure that bears his name (Section 7.2.4 in the text and on ThermoNet). This work was done before the age of 30. Daniel had a continuing feud with his father, also an eminent scientist working on hydraulics, and moved to the study of medicine and physiology after his early work in mathematics and fluid flow, apparently because of this conflict.

Joseph Black (1728-1799) performed pioneering work with latent heats of fusion and evaporation, specific heat and heat capacity. James Watt worked for some time in Black’s laboratory, and adapted some of Black’s work to improve the steam engine, particularly the design of the external condenser.

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) did important work on the kinetic theory of gases and on heat transfer by radiation, but is probably best known for his invention, independently of J. Willard Gibbs, of statistical mechanics and the formulation of entropy on a microscopic basis. He committed suicide in 1906, probably because of depression (he was subject to what we now call bipolar disorder) brought on by broad criticism of his work. Boltzmann's epitaph in the Central Cemetery in Vienna reads (see Section 6.1.1 in the text)

Ludwig Boltzmann
1844-1906
S = k lnW

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was the seventh son (and fourteenth child) of his parents’ fifteen children. His father, Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, had left England in 1588 for Ireland and bought Sir Walter Raleigh's estates. The Earl had acquired his fortune by somewhat dubious means. He was briefly imprisoned on charges of embezzlement and later was fined heavily for possessing defective titles to some of his estates.

Robert was sent to study at Eton College in England in 1635 at age eight. At the age of 12 Boyle was on a European tour and at the beginning of 1642 was in Florence. While Boyle was living in Florence Galileo died in his villa in Arcetri, which is near Florence. This event may have shaped Boyle's life and directed him towards science. Back in England, the civil war that began in 1642 was being fought. Boyle tried hard not to be forced to take sides in the civil war. Boyle went to Ireland in 1652 to look after his estates. He ended up a very rich man when Cromwell apportioned Irish lands to the English colonists. From that time on he was able to devote himself entirely to science without the need to earn money.

He made important contributions to physics and chemistry and is best known for Boyle's law (sometimes called Mariotte's Law) describing an ideal gas. Boyle's law appears in an appendix written in 1662 to his work New Experiments Physio-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (1660). The text resulted from three years of experimenting with an air pump with the help of Hooke whom he employed as his assistant. Boyle had shown that sound did not travel in a vacuum, that flame required air, and he investigated the elastic properties of air.

George Bailey Brayton (1830-1892) invented and marketed an oil-fueled internal combustion engine that implemented a cycle composed of isentropic compression and expansion coupled by constant pressure heat addition and rejection processes, the same set of processes that apply in gas turbine engines. The gas turbine cycle thus bears his name (Section 9.6.1 of the text and ThermoNet).

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) did not originally envisage a career in science, but was interested in literary studies. He entered the Sorbonne in Paris taking a course in history, with a view to a career in the diplomatic service. He graduated at 18 with an arts degree but he was becoming interested in mathematics and physics. He finally chose to study for a degree in theoretical physics.

De Broglie was awarded his undergraduate degree in 1913 but his career was put on hold by World War I. During the War de Broglie served in the army, attached to the wireless telegraphy section for the whole of the war and served at the Eiffel Tower station. During these war years his spare time was spent thinking about technical problems.

His major work was in mathematical physics, but he maintained an interest in experiments. His brother Maurice was carrying out experimental work on X-rays and this proved of considerable interest to de Broglie during his doctorate work. De Broglie's doctoral thesis put forward his theory of electron waves, based on the work of Einstein and Planck. It proposed the theory for which he is best known, the particle-wave duality theory that matter has the properties of both particles and waves. The wave nature of the electron was experimentally confirmed in 1927.

His was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. After receiving the Prize, de Broglie worked on extensions of wave mechanics. The central question in de Broglie's life was whether the statistical nature of atomic physics reflects an ignorance of the underlying theory or whether statistics is all that can be known.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859), while not truly a thermodynamicist, is considered the preeminent engineer in British history. He financed and constructed major engineering works including bridges, tunnels, the Great Western Railroad, and the steamships Great Western and Great Eastern (the latter by far the largest ship of its time, and used in laying the Atlantic cable. She was not exceeded in her 693-foot length until the launch of the Mauretania in 1907). The steam piston engines built for the Great Eastern were of immense size. They generated a total of 10,000 horsepower, and drove two 58-foot diameter paddle wheels and a 24-foot diameter flat-bladed screw propeller.

Brunel is shown on the right in front of some of the snubbing chains used in the launch of the Great Eastern, and this photograph is one of the most famous pictures of an engineer.

Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot (1796-1832) was the son of Napoleon’s Minister of War, and was educated as a military engineer. In 1824, he published his only paper, “Reflexions on the Motive Power of Fire, and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Fire,” which outlined one form of the second law as well as a reasoned form of the first law. His analysis of the most efficient possible cycle efficiency and a cycle that has this efficiency carry his name (Section 8.3.2 in the text and on ThermoNet). His analysis was based on caloric theory, although unpublished notes indicate that he had begun to doubt that theory. He died of cholera at age 36, having provided probably the single most important contribution to classical thermodynamics.

Anders Celsius (1701-1744), although primarily an astronomer, introduced a thermometer scale with 0 at the boiling point of water, and 100 at the freezing point. The scale was reversed after his death to provide the present Celsius scale (formerly called the centigrade scale). Celsius showed that the boiling point of water varied with atmospheric pressure, and introduced corrections to the temperature scale to account for this.

Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles (1746-1823) was entrusted by the French Academy of Science to study the new gas balloons that had recently been flown by the Montgolfier brothers. Charles knew that in 1766 the British scientist Henry Cavendish had isolated the gas that was later called hydrogen. He either thought the Montgolfier brothers had used hydrogen rather than the hot air they actually used, or independently thought of using hydrogen in place of hot air.

On August 27, 1783, Charles' own balloon - about four meters in diameter - gathered a crowd at the Champs de Mars in Paris (near where the Eiffel Tower stands today). The balloon was silk with dissolved rubber-varnish coating to reduce hydrogen leakage. The hydrogen was manufactured using sulfuric acid over scrap-iron. The balloon ascended and disappeared towards the north, followed by horsemen. One spectator was the American ambassador to France, 77 year old Benjamin Franklin. When asked of what possible use this new invention could be, Franklin replied: "And of what use is a new-born baby?"

After about 45 minutes the balloon descended into a field close to the present Charles de Gaulle airport.The local farmers used pick axes and spades to attack the bad smelling beast that had fallen from the sky. The horsemen saved only some torn remains.

On December 1st, 1783, Charles and a colleague made the first manned ascent in a hydrogen filled balloon. In the following year, these same Frenchmen constructed the first 'airship' (an elongated balloon), using oars for propulsion and a sort of rudder to steer.

Charles made detailed measurements in 1787, later verified by Gay-Lussac, on the change of gas volume with temperature, and the resulting Charles' Law states that an ideal gas changes volume in proportion to absolute temperature in a constant pressure process.

Benoit Paul Emile Clapeyron (1799-1864) was a railway designer and engineer, producing designs for some of the first locomotives used in France. He embraced and clarified the work of Carnot, and made it widely accepted. He also derived a relation for the heat of vaporization of a liquid (The Clapeyron equation; see Section 14.3.2 of the text) that is based on the Maxwell relations among properties.

Rudolph Julius Emmanuel Clausius (1822-1888) published an important paper in 1850 on the mechanical theory of heat, and showed that the maximum work available from a cycle operating between two thermal reservoirs depends only on the temperature of those reservoirs, and not on the properties of the working fluid. He based his analysis on the mechanical equivalence of heat transfer and work, and not on the caloric theory which had been the basis of Carnot’s and Clapeyron’s approaches to the second law. He first used the concept of internal energy, although he did not give it a name or symbol, and he modified the Clapeyron equation for greater simplicity by introducing some approximations (Section 14.3.2 of the text).

Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (1725 - 1804) is credited with inventing and crafting the first self-propelled road vehicle in 1769. It was a military tractor that used a steam engine for power. It was used by the French Army to haul artillery at 2 1/2 mph, and balanced on three wheels. The steam engine and boiler were separate from the rest of the vehicle and placed in the front (see the photograph of the tractor in the Arts et Metiers Museum in Paris ). The following year (1770), Cugnot built a steam-powered tricycle that carried four passengers.

In 1771, Cugnot drove one of his road vehicles into a stone wall, making him the first person to be involved in a motor vehicle accident. One of his financial backers died and another was exiled, and the money for Cugnot's road vehicle experiments ended.

John Dalton (1766-1844) was a British chemist and physicist who developed the atomic theory of matter and is considered a father of modern physical science.

He was the son of a Quaker weaver. He became a teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at New College in Manchester, the doors of Cambridge and Oxford being open at that time only to members of the Church of England. He resigned this position in 1800 to become secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

In the early days of his teaching, Dalton was influenced by a capable meteorologist and instrument maker, who interested him in the problems of mathematics and meteorology. He took careful meteorological measurements, collected botanical and insect species, and in 1788 began observations of the aurora. He concluded that some relationship must exist between the aurora and the Earth's magnetism. Other topics included the barometer, thermometer, hygrometer, rainfall, the formation of clouds, evaporation and the distribution and character of atmospheric moisture, including the concept of the dew point. He determined the temperature of the maximum density of water. He also became interested in color blindness, a condition shared with his brother.

His early studies on gases led to development of the law of partial pressures (known as Dalton's law), which states that the total pressure of a mixture of gases equals the sum of the pressures of the gases in the mixture, each gas acting independently. These experiments also resulted in his theory according to which gas expands as it rises in temperature (Charles's law, which should really be credited to Dalton ). He formulated the theory that a chemical combination of different elements occurs in simple numerical ratios by weight. Finally, he developed his masterpiece - the atomic theory, the thesis that all elements are composed of tiny, indestructible particles called atoms that are all alike and have the same atomic weight.

He had few friends and was unmarried. His equipment was crude, and his data were often inexact, but they were enough to give him clues to the probable answer. His comprehensive documents were destroyed during the bombings of England in World War II.

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

                               E. Clerihew Bentley at age 16

Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was born in Penzance, Cornwall, England. His father died in 1794, and Davy became an apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary to help support his family. Davy began to study the chemical effects of electricity in 1800. He soon found that when he passed electrical current through some substances, these substances decomposed (a process later called electrolysis). In 1807 he separated potassium from molten potash and sodium from common salt. Davy discovered magnesium, calcium, strontium, and barium in 1808. He described potassium as particles which, when thrown into water, "skimmed about excitedly with a hissing sound, and soon burned with a lovely lavender light." His brother said that Humphry "danced around and was delirious with joy" at his discovery.

In 1811, Michael Faraday impressed Davy by sending him bound notes of Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution, including exact drawings of Davy's apparatus. Davy had been temporarily blinded by an explosion in his laboratory, and he needed help. He hired Faraday at once, beginning a close personal and professional association that lasted for years, although Davy twice opposed Faraday’s election to the Royal Society.

In 1829 he made his home in Rome, and while there, he had a heart attack. He died on May 29, 1829 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) was the superintendent of Otto’s gas engine works, and realized that the Otto engine must operate on liquid fuel if it were to become practical for transportation applications. He obtained a patent in 1879 for a multicylinder engine operating on a common crank, and working with design engineer Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929), produced the first commercially successful automotive engine. Improvements on their pilot-flame ignited engine were made by adopting the spark ignition system pioneered by Karl Benz (1844-1929).

Rudolph Christian Karl Diesel (1858-1913) began his career by designing large steam engines and boilers. He studied to find a replacement for the existing steam engines, which were only about 10 % efficient. He believed that his oil-fueled engine cycle (Section 9.4 of the text and ThermoNet) provided the closest practical internal combustion cycle to the Carnot efficiency. A demonstration of his engine in 1893 resulted in an explosion that nearly ended his life. He demonstrated a practical engine in 1893. Fuel problems dogged early adopters of the engine due to sulphur and asphalt content. Failing health, criticism and financial setbacks beset him, and in 1913 he disappeared from a boat crossing the English channel on a calm moonlit night.

John Ericsson (1803-1889) was a prolific inventor and engineer. Of Swedish descent, he spent much of his career in England and the US. While in England, he invented the screw propeller for ships (paddle wheels were used until then), the shell-and-tube heat exchanger, and a locomotive that very nearly won the competition to become the standard English design. In the US, he designed and built the Monitor, which set the standard for iron-clad ships for the next 50 years. He designed and marketed hot-air external combustion engines, including one model that was solar powered. These replaced steam engines which at the time were experiencing a serious series of boiler explosions. One such engine was installed on the Ericsson, a cargo ship, and had four 14-foot diameter cylinders with six-foot stroke, taking so much cargo space that the ship was uneconomical although technically a success.

Oliver Evans (1755-1918) built the first high-pressure (up to 220 psia) boilers and steam engines in the United States, considerably increasing the efficiency of the engines. He built the first powered land vehicle in the US when he fitted a wagon for hauling a paddle-wheel powered barge from his shop to the nearby Schuylkill River with a link to the barges steam engine. He is of historical interest for having sued President Thomas Jefferson for patent infringement for using one of his patents on integrated grist mills.

Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) developed both an alcohol and mercury thermometer, as well as the temperature scale that bears his name. He was the first to calibrate thermometers with a reproducible scale; previously, each thermometer had an arbitrary scale. His scale originally used for the alcohol thermometer used the zero point at the temperature of an equal mixture by weight of ice and salt, and 90 degrees as the temperature of the human body, resulting in 30 degrees for the freezing point of water. Later, the mercury thermometer allowed expansion of the scale to the boiling point of water at 212 degrees, and the rest of the scale was revised to 98.6 degrees for the body temperature and the freezing point of water to 32 degrees.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was born near London, the son of a blacksmith. He received little formal education. While apprenticed to a bookbinder in London, he read books on scientific subjects and experimented with electricity. In 1812 he attended a series of lectures given by Sir Humphry Davy and forwarded the notes he took at these lectures to Davy, together with a request for employment. Davy employed Faraday as an assistant in his chemical laboratory, and in 1813 took Faraday with him on an extended tour of Europe. Davy gave Faraday a valuable scientific education and also introduced him to important scientists in Europe. Faraday was elected to the Royal Society in 1824 and in 1833 he succeeded Davy as professor of chemistry at the institution. Two years later he was given a pension of 300 pounds per year for life.

Faraday's earliest researches were in the field of chemistry, following the lead of Davy. A study of chlorine, which Faraday included in his researches, led to the discovery of two new chlorides of carbon. In a series of experiments he was successful in liquefying a number of common gases.

Faraday’s reputation as the foremost experimental scientist of his day was established in the fields of electricity and magnetism. In 1821 he began experimenting with electromagnetism and by demonstrating the conversion of electrical energy into motive force, invented the electric motor. In 1831 Faraday discovered the induction of electric currents and made the first dynamo. In 1837 he demonstrated that electrostatic force consists of a field of curved lines of force, and conceived a specific inductive capacity. This led to Faraday being able to develop his theories on light and gravitational systems.

During this same period he investigated the phenomena of electrolysis and discovered two fundamental electrochemical laws.

In experimenting with magnetism, Faraday made two discoveries of great importance; one was the existence of diamagnetism, and the other was the fact that a magnetic field has the power to rotate the plane of polarized light passing through certain types of glass.

Faraday was unwilling to use his scientific knowledge to help military action and in 1853 refused to help develop poison gases to be used in the Crimean War.

Joseph Henry (1797-1878) widely considered the foremost American scientist of the 19th century, also performed investigations of electromagnetic phenomena, and his discovery of electromagnetic self-induction in 1831 established his reputation in America. Henry appears to have discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction independently of Faraday, but because Faraday published his results first, he is credited with the discovery.

Henry Ford (1863-1947) was the son of Irish immigrants who settled on a farm in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford attended school in a one-room schoolhouse but disliked school and farm life, and at age 16, walked to Detroit in search of employment.

He worked for a time as an apprentice in a machine shop, where he learned the mechanics of the internal combustion engine. Several years later, he became chief engineer at the Detroit Edison Company. During that period, he built and drove racing cars.

In 1903, Ford produced an automobile he was ready to market, and he formed the Ford Motor Company with capital from Detroit citizens. In 1908, he introduced the Model T, which was manufactured for 19 years. Ford introduced the use of standardized interchangeable parts and assembly-line techniques in his plant in 1913. This drastically reduced production time. Although Ford neither originated nor was the first to employ such practices, he was chiefly responsible for their general adoption and for the consequent great expansion of American industry.

By early 1914 this innovation, although greatly increasing productivity, had resulted in a monthly labor turnover of 40 to 60 percent in his factory, largely because of the monotony of assembly-line work and repeated increases in the production quotas. Ford doubled the daily wage then standard in the industry, resulting in increased stability in his labor force and reducing operating costs. These factors, coupled with the enormous increase in productivity made possible by the new methods, led to a doubling of profits between 1914 and 1916. By 1926, the Model T was becoming outdated and Ford began losing sales. The Ford plants were shut down for five months, after which Ford introduced the Model A and later the V-8. Both models were moderately successful. Ford's stubborn and authoritarian management style were notorious. He was not persuaded to sign a contract with the United Auto Workers until 1941.

Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) was the ninth of twelve children from his father’s second marriage. Joseph's mother died when he was nine years old and his father died the following year.

Joseph studied Latin and French and showed great promise. He proceeded in 1780 to the École Royale Militaire of Auxerre where at first he showed talents for literature but by the age of thirteen, mathematics became his real interest. In 1787 Fourier decided to train for the priesthood. His interest in mathematics continued, however, and he did not take his religious vows. He visited Paris and read a paper on algebraic equations at the Académie Royale des Sciences. In 1790 he became a teacher at the École Royale Militaire of Auxerre, where he had studied. The plaque below commemorates Fourier in the square at Auxerre.

In 1793, he became heavily involved in politics and joined the local Revolutionary Committee. In July 1794 he was arrested and imprisoned. Fourier feared the he would go to the guillotine but political changes resulted in his being freed.

Later in 1794 Fourier was nominated to study at the new École Normale in Paris. The school opened in January 1795 and Fourier was taught by Lagrange and Laplace. Through the rest of his life, he juggled politics and mathematics through an on-again, off-again interaction with Napoleon, who valued his abilities as technical advisor and administrator.

At Napoleon's request he went to Grenoble where his duties as Prefect were many and varied. During his time there, Fourier did his important mathematical work on the theory of heat and by 1807 he had completed his important memoir On the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies. Objections to the work were made by Lagrange, Laplace, Biot and later Poisson, a formidable array!

The Paris Institute set as a prize competition subject the propagation of heat in solid bodies for the 1811 mathematics prize. Fourier submitted his 1807 memoir together with additional work on the cooling of infinite solids and terrestrial and radiant heat, and the Award Committee gave Fourier the prize.

During Fourier's last years in Paris he resumed his mathematical researches and published a number of papers on mathematics. His life was not without problems, however, since his theory of heat still provoked controversy. Biot claimed priority over Fourier, a claim which Fourier showed to be false. Poisson attacked both Fourier's mathematical techniques and also claimed to have an alternative theory.

Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) had parents who worked on a collective farm. His mother was reportedly a voracious reader, and his father a skilled carpenter who did not advertise his abilities to avoid the wrath of Stalin's purges against the "kulaks". Like millions of Russians, the Gagarin family suffered great hardship in World War II. After starting an apprenticeship in a metal work's, Gagarin was selected for further training at a technical school. While there, he joined the "AeroClub", and learned to fly light aircraft, a hobby that became consuming. In 1955, he entered military flight training, and met Valentina Gorycheva, whom he married in 1957.

In 1960, Gagarin, among 20 other cosmonauts, was selected for the Soviet space program. Eventually the choice for the first person to launch into space was between Gagarin and Gherman Titov, because of their excellent performance in training, as well as their small stature - the Vostok cockpit was quite small. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 1. From orbit, Gagarin made the comment, "I don't see any god up here."

After the flight, Gagarin became an instant, worldwide celebrity, touring widely to promote the Soviet achievement. This appeared to gradually wear him down, and he began to drink heavily - not helped by difficulties in his marriage. In October 1961 he severely injured himself in a drunken holiday escapade with a young nurse.

From 1962 he served in administrative posts. In 1967, he was selected as backup for the first Soyuz launch. The Soyuz capsule's parachute failed during reentry and the craft crashed, killing astronaut Vladimir Komarov.

Gagarin became deputy training director of the space establishment. In the process of this, he began to requalify as a fighter pilot. Scattered resources consistently refer to a serious quarrel that took place between Gagarin and General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev at a banquet where both parties heavily insulted each other in public using very strong language. Soon after, he was killed in a crash of a MiG-15 on a routine training flight near Moscow together with his instructor.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) spent his early years with his family in Pisa. When he was old enough, his parents sent him to a monastery. He became a novice, intending to join the Order, but his father had decided that his eldest son should become a medical doctor. In 1581 Galileo was sent back to Pisa to enroll for a medical degree at the University of Pisa. However, he attended courses on his real interests in mathematics and natural philosophy. He left in 1585 without completing his degree.

Galileo began teaching mathematics and was appointed to fill the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589 (although this was a nominal position to provide financial support for Galileo). During his three years there he wrote a series of essays on the theory of motion. Among the new ideas they contain is that one can test theories by conducting experiments.

In 1591, Galileo's father died, leaving Galileo to provide support for the rest of the family and provide dowries for his two younger sisters. The post at Pisa was not well paid, so Galileo looked for a more lucrative one. He was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Padua in 1592 at a salary three times that at Pisa. He spent eighteen years at the university, among the happiest of his life. While there, he began a long-term relationship with Maria Gamba, but they did not marry. In 1600 their first child Virginia was born, followed by a second daughter in 1601 and a son in 1606.

Galileo argued against Aristotle's view of astronomy in three public lectures in 1604. Aristotle’s view was that changes in the heavens had to occur close to the Earth, the realm of the fixed stars being permanent. Galileo used parallax arguments to prove that an observed supernova could not be close to the Earth.

Galileo made a series of telescopes and immediately saw the commercial and military applications. The Venetian Senate was impressed and, in return for a large increase in his salary, Galileo gave the sole rights to manufacture telescopes to the Senate. He must have known that such rights were meaningless, particularly since he always acknowledged that the telescope was not his invention! The astronomical discoveries he made were described in his 1610 book, the Starry Messenger. Galileo claimed to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter. In June 1610, Galileo resigned his post at Padua and became Chief Mathematician at the University of Pisa (without teaching duties) and 'Mathematician and Philosopher' to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

In 1614, his two daughters entered a Convent. Since they had been born outside of marriage, Galileo believed that they should never marry.

In 1618 Galileo became involved in another controversy regarding the nature of comets, with the result that the Jesuits began to see Galileo as a dangerous opponent. Galileo tried to avoid further controversy by not making public statements on the issue of the Copernican vs. Aristotlian view of the universe. The long history of his interaction with the Catholic Church on this issue is complex but fascinating. Finally found guilty of heresy, Galileo was condemned to lifelong imprisonment, but the sentence as carried out amounted to house arrest.

In 1634, his daughter Virginia, Sister Maria Celeste, died. She had been a great support to her father through his illnesses and Galileo was shattered. When he managed to restart work, he wrote Discourses and mathematical demonstrations concerning the two new sciences. It was smuggled out of Italy to Holland where it was published.

At his death in 1642, his body was concealed and only placed in a fine church tomb in 1737 by the civil authorities against the wishes of many in the Church. In 1992, 350 years after Galileo's death, Pope John Paul II gave an address in which he admitted that errors had been made. He declared the case closed, but did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates round the sun.

Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882-1945) is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion. Along with Konstantin Eduordovich Tsiolkovsky of Russia and Hermann Oberth of Germany, Goddard envisioned the exploration of space.

In 1914, Goddard received two U.S. patents, one for a rocket using liquid fuel, the other for a multi-stage rocket using solid fuel. His classic document of 1916 was entitled "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes." Here, he detailed his search for methods of raising weather recording instruments higher than sounding balloons and developed the mathematical theories of rocket propulsion. The work was republished by the Smithsonian Institution in 1920. Towards the end of the report, Goddard outlined the possibility of a rocket reaching the moon and exploding a load of flash powder there to mark its arrival. The press picked up Goddard's scientific proposal about a rocket flight to the moon and much ridicule came Goddard's way.

Goddard's rocket tested on March 16, 1926 was the first using liquid fuel. Small subsidies from the Smithsonian and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the leaves of absence granted him by Worcester Polytechnic Institute, allowed Goddard to sustain his research and testing. Goddard's greatest engineering contributions were made during his work in the 1920's and 1930's. Progress on all of his work was published in Liquid Propellant Rocket Development, which was published by the Smithsonian in 1936.

Several copies of the 1920 Smithsonian report reached Europe. The German Rocket Society was formed in 1927, and the German Army began its rocket program in 1931. Goddard's work largely anticipated the later German V-2 missiles, including gyroscopic control, steering by means of vanes in the jet stream of the rocket motor, gimbal steering, power-driven fuel pumps and other devices. He died on August 10,1945.

Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) was educated at Yale and there earned the first engineering doctorate awarded in the US. He is considered one of America ’s greatest scientists. He developed the fundamentals of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics, improved the understanding of chemical and phase equilibrium, and introduced the T-s diagram as a useful tool in visualizing the behavior of heat engines (See Section 9.6.1). His book Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics is said to be considered elementary only by Gibbs.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850), as with a number of others described in this catalog, was greatly affected by the French Revolution. His early comfortable life was disrupted when his father, a lawyer, was imprisoned when Joseph was fourteen. Joseph benefited when he was selected to attend the new École Polytechnique, an institution designed to create scientific and technical leadership. His mentors included Laplace and Claude Louis Berthollet (a close associate of Napoleon), among other scientists who had been converted by Lavoisier to oxygen chemistry.

He shared the interest of Lavoisier and others in the quantitative study of the properties of gases. His first major research in 1801–1802 settled conflicting evidence about the expansion properties of different gases. By eliminating water vapor from the apparatus and by making sure that the gases themselves were moisture free, he obtained results that were more accurate than had been obtained previously. He concluded that equal volumes of all gases expand equally with the same increase in temperature. Although Charles discovered this volume-temperature relationship fifteen years earlier, he had not published, and Charles did not measure the coefficient of expansion. In 1804 Gay-Lussac made ascents of over seven thousand meters above sea level in hydrogen-filled balloons. He took careful pressure, temperature, and humidity measurements and samples of air, which he later analyzed chemically. In 1808 Gay-Lussac announced that from his own and others' experiments, he deduced that gases at constant temperature and pressure combine in very simple numerical proportions by volume, resulting in gaseous products that also bear a simple proportion by volume to the volumes of the reactants. His precise measurement of the thermal expansion of gases was used by Lord Kelvin in the development of the absolute temperature scale and the Third Law of Thermodynamics and by Clausius in the development of the Second Law.

Gay-Lussac also did early electrochemical research with an associate, investigating the elements produced and discovering the element boron nine days before Davy, although Davy published first.

His most important contribution to industry was, in 1827, the refinement of the lead chamber process for the production of sulfuric acid. The tall absorption towers are still known as Gay-Lussac Towers.

Herman Ludwig von Helmholtz (1821-1894) extended Joule’s experimental results to the general theory of the conservation of energy. Because he was a physician by training, he was unable to get his work published in leading scientific journals, and self-published his results. This work was among other far-ranging contributions to electromagnetic theory, the three-color theory of color synthesis, and hydrodynamics.

William Henry (1775 – 1836) formulated Henry's law in 1803. This law states that when a gas is dissolved in a liquid at a given temperature, the mass that dissolves is in direct proportion to the pressure of the gas.

Henry was born in Manchester and graduated from Edinburgh. He worked mainly for his father, an industrial chemist, for about 20 years on the analysis of inflammable mixtures of gases and attempted to find correlations between chemical composition and illuminative properties. He established that the cause of many mining disasters, the explosion of “coal damp”, was actually methane gas, and confirmed the composition of methane and ethane. Like Dalton, Henry showed that hydrogen and carbon combine in definite proportions to form a limited number of compounds.

Henry also studied contagious diseases and believed that these were spread by chemicals which could be rendered harmless by heating; he used heat to disinfect clothing during an outbreak of cholera in 1831.

A series of lectures which he gave 1798-99 were later published as Elements of Experimental Chemistry and became a highly successful textbook.

Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was born and died at the Hague. His father had studied natural philosophy and was a diplomat. Christiaan gained access through him to the top scientific circles of the times. He studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange at Breda.

In 1654 his attention was directed to the improvement of the telescope. In 1655, using one of his own lenses, Huygens detected the first moon of Saturn. His astronomical observations required some exact means of measuring time, and he was thus led in 1656 to invent the pendulum clock. The time-pieces previously in use had been balance-clocks.

His reputation was now so great that in 1665, Louis XIV offered him a pension if he would live in Paris, which accordingly became his place of residence. Huygens' health had never been robust and in 1670 he had a serious illness which resulted in him leaving Paris for Holland. By 1671 Huygens returned to Paris. However in 1672 Louis XIV invaded the Low Countries and Huygens found himself in the extremely difficult position of being in an important position in Paris at a time France was at war with his own country. Scientists of this era felt themselves above political wars and Huygens was able, with much support from his friends, to continue his work.

The most important of Huygens's work was his Horologium Oscillatorium published at Paris in 1673, describing the dynamics of clockworks. In 1675 he proposed to regulate the motion of watches by the use of the balance spring. Watches had been invented early in the sixteenth century, and by the end of that century were not uncommon, but they were clumsy and unreliable and, until 1687 they had only one hand. The first watch regulated by a balance spring was made at Paris under Huygens's directions, and presented by him to Louis XIV.

The increasing intolerance of the Catholics led to his return to Holland in 1681, and after the revocation of the edict of Nantes he refused to hold any further communication with France. He now devoted himself to the construction of lenses of enormous focal length. It was about this time that he discovered the achromatic eye-piece (for a telescope) which is known by his name.

In 1689 he came from Holland to England in order to make the acquaintance of Newton, whose Principia had been published in 1687. Huygens fully recognized the intellectual merits of the work, but seems to have believed any theory incomplete which did not explain gravitation by mechanical means. In England Huygens met Newton, Boyle and others. It is not known what discussions went on between Huygens and Newton, but Huygens had a great admiration for Newton. At the same time Huygens did not believe the theory of universal gravitation which he said “appears to me absurd.”

On his return in 1690 Huygens published his treatise on light in which the wave theory was expounded and explained. The immense reputation of Newton led to disbelief in a theory which Newton rejected, and to the general adoption of Newton 's emission theory.

In the final years of his life Huygens composed one of the earliest discussions of extraterrestrial life, published after his death as the Cosmotheoros (1698). He continued to work on improving lenses and on a spring regulated clock and on new pendulum clocks, and is credited with inventing the practical magic lantern.

James Hopwood Jeans (1877-1946) was educated in London. The first topic which interested him was classics but soon his interests turned towards mathematics. An excellent teacher at the school encouraged Jeans' interest in the subject.

Jeans went to Trinity College Cambridge in 1896 on a mathematical scholarship. As an undergraduate he gained experience in experimental physics in the Cavendish Laboratory during 1899-1900. He suffered from tuberculosis during 1902 and 1903 and he had to go to a sanatorium to recover. During this period, Jeans worked on his first major text The dynamical theory of gases, a scholarly account of the whole area including a description of the physical properties of gases.

Planck had announced in 1900 his formula on black-body radiation, but Jeans was strongly opposed to Planck's results.

Jeans held a series of posts between 1900 and 1906, and during this period he published his second major text Theoretical Mechanics (1906).

In 1907 Jeans married an American, Charlotte Tiffany Mitchell, who became a poet of note. He published The Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism in 1908 while still in the United States. In 1909 he returned to England and the following year he was appointed Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at Cambridge. He held this post until 1912 when he retired to devote himself to research and writing.

Jeans continued to produce a remarkable output, and he wrote a report on Radiation and Quantum Theory in 1914. In this work he showed that he had come to accept Planck's formula on black-body radiation which he had rejected in 1905. He published widely in the field of cosmology during this time.

Jeans worked on thermodynamics, heat and other aspects of radiation, publishing major works on these topics and on applications to astronomy. After 1929 Jeans gave up original research and spent most of his time writing popular texts. After his wife died in 1934, he remarried. His second wife, Suzanne Hock, was an accomplished musician. Jeans had a second organ installed in his home and designed the acoustics in his house to allow both his wife and himself to play their organs without disturbing each other.

His later technical books include Astronomy and Cosmogony (1928), and Introduction to the Kinetic Theory of Gases (1940). He had a heart attack in January 1945 but made a good recovery and, in July 1946, went on holiday with his wife to Montreux. After a second heart attack in September Jeans died in his home.

James Prescott Joule (1818-1889) proposed that work and heat transfer were simply different forms of the same quantity, which we now recognize as energy. His ideas were based on a series of experiments in which work in various forms (mechanical, electrical) was introduced into a vessel, and the resulting temperature rise in the material in the vessel was measured and compared with the temperature rise caused by heat transfer. The quantitative comparison, called the “mechanical equivalent of heat”, laid the groundwork for general energy conservation in the form of the First Law of Thermodynamics. He used his honeymoon in Switzerland to search for a waterfall high enough to allow careful measurement of the conversion of work into internal energy and a resulting temperature rise.

Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) (1824-1907) suggested a thermodynamic temperature scale based on Carnot’s work. Although working on the laying of the Atlantic cable, he found time to publish work in 1849 (at age 25) that included the first use of the words thermodynamic and mechanical energy. By 1850 he had abandoned the caloric theory, and worked with Joule to extend Joule’s earlier experiments to examine the expansion of gases, leading to the measurement and introduction of the Joule-Thomson coefficient (see Section 3.15).

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) was the son of a wealthy Paris family.  His father was a lawyer. Most of Europe, and especially France, was in social upheaval. Lavoisier's family were among the upper class so Lavoisier was able to complete a degree in law in fulfillment of his family's wishes, but never practiced.  At age 21 he began to study mathematics and science under eminent scientists of the time.  His work with geology and his winning essay on the best means of lighting the streets of a large city gained him an elected membership at the age of 25 into the French Academy of Sciences.

In 1768, he bought into the Ferme Générale, a private company that collected taxes for the Crown, a system that was often abused. The collectors were the target of hatred among both peasants and merchants.  All evidence suggests that Lavoisier discharged his duties honestly and without corruption. 

In 1771, Lavoisier married 13-year old Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze (picture above), the daughter of a co-owner of the Ferme.  With time, she proved to be a scientific colleague to her husband by learning English so she could translate scientific papers.  Madame Lavoisier drew the sketches of Lavoisier's apparatuses and laboratory and joined in scientific discussion.

Over the 20 year period 1770 - 1790, the science of chemistry experienced a fundamental revolution. The architect of the revolution was Antoine Lavoisier. Lavoisier believed that weight was conserved through the course of chemical reactions. He explained combustion (and respiration) in terms of chemical reactions that involve a component of air which he called oxygen. In 1775, he was appointed Commissioner of the Royal Gunpowder and Saltpeter Administration. As such, he was able to build a fine laboratory at the Paris Arsenal. In 1777, Lavoisier conducted an experiment on heating mercury in air that established a fatal shortcoming of the phlogiston theory.

Proof of the validity of Lavoisier's oxygen theory came when Lavoisier first decomposed water into two gases, which he named hydrogen and oxygen, and then reformed them into water. To spread his ideas and the oxygen theory, Lavoisier published a book, naming a total of 33 elements.

Lavoisier was a political liberal.  Through the events that led up to the French Revolution, Lavoisier contributed to the plans for reform, including the establishment of the metric system.  After the French Revolution, Lavoisier was a member of the Commission for the Establishment of the Metric System and was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in 1791. Despite all of the contributions to science and France made by Lavoisier in his 51-year life, it was his connection with the Ferme Générale that the revolution zealots noted.  After a trial by jury, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, along with his father-in-law, were found guilty of conspiracy against the people of France. He was guillotined on May 8, 1794.

Madame Lavoisier was remarried to Count Rumford in 1805.

Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir (1822-1900) was a Belgian who settled in Paris and became a naturalized French citizen. He invented his gas engine in 1858 and patented it in 1860. In 1859 he built a single-cylinder, two-stroke, gas-fueled engine which had electric spark ignition. The engine ran on stove gas and had no compression. A liquid-fuel version, with a primitive carburetor, was built in 1862 and installed in a three-wheeled wagon early in 1863. It successfully covered an 18 kilometers round trip, securing its place in history as the first spark-ignition petroleum-fuel car to demonstrate its roadworthiness. The car was grossly fuel inefficient and very noisy. The ignition system was unreliable and the engine tended to overheat and, if insufficient cooling water was not applied, was inclined to seize up. Lenoir did not continue his work on cars; however, the engine was much more successful in applications such as driving small printing presses, water pumps and machine tools. Approximately five hundred Lenoir engines of between 6 and 20 horsepower were built before the design was superseded by improved designs by Nikolaus Otto and other inventors. Lenoir's engine was the first of it's type to be manufactured commercially and was also the first to be used for road transport.

Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875- 1946) was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts as the son of a Dartmouth-graduated lawyer/broker. He was a precocious child who learned to read at age three. He was home schooled until age 13, when he entered the preparatory school of the University of Nebraska, and continued to the University. After his second year, he transferred to Harvard, where he concentrated in chemistry, getting his B.A. in 1896 and his Ph.D. in 1899.

After earning his Ph.D., he stayed as an instructor for a year before taking a traveling fellowship, studying under Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig and Nernst at Goettingen. He then returned to Harvard as an instructor, and in 1904 left to become superintendent of weights and measures for the Bureau of Science of the Philippine Islands. The next year he returned to Cambridge when MIT appointed him to a faculty position. He quickly rose in rank, becoming assistant professor in 1907, associate professor on 1908, and full professor in 1911. He left MIT to become professor of physical chemistry and dean of the College of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1912.

In 1908 he published the first of several papers on relativity, in which he derived the mass-energy relationship in a different way from Einstein's. On June 21, 1912, he married Mary Hinckley Sheldon. They had two sons, both of whom became chemistry professors, and a daughter.

In 1913, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, but in 1934 he resigned in a dispute over the internal politics of that institution.

Based on work by J. Willard Gibbs, it was known that chemical reactions proceeded to an equilibrium determined by the free energy of the substances taking part. Lewis spent 25 years determining free energies of various substances. In 1923 he and Merle Randall published the results of this study and formalized chemical thermodynamics.

In 1926, he coined the term "photon" for the smallest unit of radiant energy.

Lewis was the first to produce a pure sample of deuterium oxide (heavy water) in 1933. By accelerating deuterons (deuterium nuclei) in Ernest O. Lawrence's cyclotron, he was able to study many of the properties of atomic nuclei.

He died at age 70 of a heart attack while working in his laboratory.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711-1765) was the first Russian scientist of world importance. His father was a peasant fisherman. Lomonosov posed as the son of a nobleman to gain admission to the Latin Academy in Moscow, where he proved to be an outstanding student. He studied mineralogy and chemistry in St. Petersburg and Germany. He became the first Russian professor of chemistry at the St. Petersburg Academy in 1745.

He supported the "atomic-molecular" theory of matter and "molecular-kinetic" theory of heat. The latter was a forerunner of the statistical thermodynamics that developed in the following century. During a transit of Venus across the Sun on 26 May 1761, he discovered that Venus possesses an atmosphere. His paper on Discourses on the Hardness and Liquidity of Bodies describes geometric arrangements for packing spheres (atoms) in the crystal lattice. Lomonosov strove to upgrade the quality of Russian science and education and eventually succeeded in founding what is now Moscow State University in 1755. This university, officially named after Lomonosov, is at the apex of the Russian system of higher education.

In 1765, Lomonosov caught a cold and died at age 54. He is buried in the cemetery of Alexander Nevsky Monastary in St. Petersburg, Russia.

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), along with his many extremely important contributions in electromagnetic theory and other fields of science, formulated the kinetic theory of gases independently of Boltzmann. Working with Clausius, he used a statistical approach to find the velocity distribution in an assembly of gas molecules at a given temperature (the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, Section 14.4.1 of the text). He also observed the relationships among thermodynamic properties embodied in Maxwell’s Relations (Section 14.3.2 of the text).

Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878) was a ship’s physician, and proposed the equivalence of heat transfer and work as energy forms along with Joule, based on some results from Joseph Black. He had great difficulty in obtaining recognition; his earliest submitted manuscripts were not even acknowledged, and later work was ridiculed. In despair, he attempted suicide by jumping from a window, but succeeded only in breaking both legs. Suicide being interpreted as proof of insanity, he was committed for some time to an asylum. He has recently been recognized along with Joule as establishing the mechanical theory of heat.

Walther Hermann Nernst (1864-1941) was born in West Prussia where his father was a district judge. He attended the Universities of Zurich, Berlin and Graz studying physics and mathematics, before proceeding to Wurzburg, where he graduated in 1887 with a thesis on electromotive forces produced by magnetism in heated metal plates. He moved to Leipzig University, where van 't Hoff, Arrhenius and Wilhelm Ostwald were already established, and began his research.

In 1894 he received an invitation to the Physics Chair in Göttingen, where he founded the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry and became its Director. In 1905 he moved to the University of Berlin, becoming Director of the newly-founded "Physikalisch-Chemisches Institut" in 1924, where he remained until his retirement in 1933.

His early studies were in electrochemistry. His formulation of the Third Law of Thermodynamics was developed in 1906.

Nernst and his students in Berlin proceeded to make many important physico-chemical measurements, particularly determinations of specific heats of solids at very low temperatures and of vapor densities at high temperatures.

His electrical piano, which replaced the sounding board with radio amplifiers, did not gain acceptance among musicians.

In later years, he occupied himself with astrophysical theories, a field in which the heat theorem had important applications.

Nernst married Emma Lohmeyer in 1892. They had two sons, who were both killed in the First World War, and three daughters. He died in Berlin on November 18, 1941.

Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729) conceived of moving a piston inside a cylinder by using the difference between atmospheric pressure and the partial vacuum created by condensing steam inside the cylinder, and produced his first successful engine in 1712. He worked independently of Denis Papin, who conceived a pump based on similar principles.

Newcomen had worked for ten years to produce a useful engine. Thomas Savery’s patent for an engine based on fire caused Newcomen to establish a firm with Savery to avoid patent infringement problems. The Newcomen atmospheric engine had a piston connected to a large crossbeam (see the model and actual Newcomen engine in the British Science Museum, London). The crossbeam was connected to a pump piston. Newcomen engines were employed in many coal mines to drain water and allow mining to much greater depths, and also to provide a water supply to communities.

The engine was inefficient and slow, chiefly because each injection of water chilled the cylinder, and steam in the following part of the cycle was wasted in reheating the cylinder for the next stroke. In addition, power was only produced on the down stroke, and the piston was returned to the original position by a system of weights. Usual working speed was six to twelve strokes per minute. However, the Newcomen engine was automatic in operation, and some were still in operation into the twentieth century. They were gradually replaced by James Watt’s more efficient engines beginning in 1765.

There is no known portrait of Newcomen.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) has a well-deserved reputation for establishing the fundamentals of calculus, as well as his laws of mechanics and gravitation, and fundamental studies of the behavior of light. His laws of mechanics form a major part of the thermodynamic understanding of mechanical work in classical thermodynamics.

Nikolaus August Otto (1832-1891) along with his business partner Eugen Langen (1833-1895) introduced the practical gas-powered internal combustion engine using the cycle that carries his name (Section 9.3 of the text and ThermoNet). He demonstrated the engine at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. The first engines were large single-cylinder engines using illuminating gas as the fuel. He fought many legal battles to maintain exclusive production rights, finally losing because of a previous patent of which he was unaware issued to Beau de Rochas in 1862, although no practical engine resulted from that patent.

Denis Papin (1647–1712) began his studies at the University of Angers in France, graduating with a medical degree in 1669. Papin assisted Huygens with air pump experiments from 1671 to 1674 and went to London in 1675 to work with Boyle. He remained in this post until 1679 when he became Hooke's assistant. In 1681 he left for Italy where he was director of experiments at the Accademia publicca di scienze in Venice until 1684. Papin was a Calvinist, born into a Huguenot family, and after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes which had granted religious liberty to the Huguenots in 1685, he became an exile.

Papin returned to London for a time, then to a series of posts in the German states.

Papin is best known for his work as an inventor, particularly his work on the steam engine. In 1679 he invented the pressure cooker and, in 1690 he published his first work on the steam engine in De novis quibusdam machinis. In France he is considered the inventor of the steam engine, and the statue shown at the right is in the courtyard at the Arts et Metiers Museum in Paris, and proclaims “Denis Papin, Inventor of the Steam Engine”. The purpose of his steam engine was to raise water to a canal between Kassel and Karlshaven. He also used a steam engine to pump water to a tank on the roof of the palace to supply water for the fountains in the grounds. In 1705, he began working on that topic again and wrote The New Art of Pumping Water by using Steam (1707). He designed a safety valve to prevent the pressure of steam building up to dangerous levels.

Other inventions on which Papin worked were the construction of a submarine, an air gun and a grenade launcher. In 1707 Papin built the first paddle boat and that same year he returned to London where he lived in obscurity and poverty until his death. The date given for his death is based on his last known letter, dated January 23, 1712.

Charles Algernon Parsons (1854-1931) in England along with Carl G.P. deLaval in Sweden developed the axial- and centrifugal flow steam turbine as a practical device for replacing piston steam engines, particularly for naval propulsion and electrical generation where loads were nearly constant. Parsons demonstrated the usefulness of the turbine by privately building the turbine-powered ship Turbinia, which outshone the fastest Royal Navy ships of the time at the naval review held in 1897. By the 1914 review, every important ship present was turbine powered.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) experimented with atmospheric pressure, and determined the existence of the vacuum. Rene Descartes argued with him on this point, declaring in a letter that Pascal “...has too much vacuum in his head.” Pascal formulated the relation between pressure and the height of a liquid column. After observing that atmospheric pressure decreased with altitude, he inferred that a vacuum must exist above the atmosphere.

Max Planck (1858-1947) arguably laid the basis for quantum theory and was the forerunner of modern physics as based on that theory. He studied with Helmholtz, and was keenly impressed with the powerful conclusions that could be drawn from the second law. His attempts to explain the experimental data for the spectral distribution of energy from an ideal radiating surface led him to hypothesize the existance of quantized energy levels, a concept at odds with all of classical physics and thermodynamics. He was forced to accept Boltzmann’s interpretation of the second law as a statistical rather than an absolute law.

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872) wrote practical treatises on thermodynamics, including the first systematic treatment of steam engine theory, and the exposition of what we now call the Rankine cycle (Chapter 10 of the text and ThermoNet). He proposed the Rankine temperature scale in 1859. He was also a poet, writing The Mathematician in Love, and a song writer, composing such ballads as They Never Shall Have Gibraltar.

Burt Rutan (1943- ) designed SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed craft designed to enter space. His small company, Scaled Composites, Inc., constructed and tested the craft. Successful flights on September 29 and October 4, 2004, won the Anasari X-Prize of $10 million for achieving the first successful private space flight. Rutan (shown at left with the pilot of the September 29 flight, Mike Melvill) has a long career of designing unorthodox aircraft, probably most notably the Voyager, the first aircraft to carry out an unrefueled nonstop flight around the world.

SpaceShipOne is carried aloft under the White Knight (as shown on the left below), and is released at high altitude where rocket engines carry it into space. SpaceShipOne then renters the atmosphere, and descends in glide mode.

Rutan is designing and building larger versions for use in future tourist flights by Virgin Galactic Airways.

Thomas Savery (1650?-1715) invented a useable steam pump, and went into business with Thomas Newcomen (no known picture of Newcomen (1663-1729) exists) to produce steam engines for pumping water from mines. These were “atmospheric engines,” using atmospheric pressure to move a piston against the partial vacuum produced by condensing steam inside a cylinder. The engines were very inefficient, but since coal was cheap at the mine head, they were commercially successful and lasted well past the introduction of the more efficient Watt/Boulton engines. Denis Papin (1647-1712) also built and used successful steam-powered pumps in this time period, and is considered in France to be the father of the steam engine. Papin also invented the pressure cooker!

George Stephenson (1781-1848) became an engine wright at Killingworth Colliery in 1812 and studied the work of Watt and Trevithick. In 1813, he convinced the mine manager to experiment with steam locomotion. By 1814 he developed the locomotive Blutcher, capable of pulling 30 tons up a grade at 4 miles per hour. Stephenson's creation was the first successful flanged-wheel locomotive, which relied on adhesion between wheel and track and avoided the use of cog and rack pinions.

In 1821 the Stockton and Darlington Railway was given Parliamentary approval, but its proprietor, Edward Pease, planned to use horse traction. Stephenson showed him Blutcher at work at Killingworth and Pease became an instant convert to steam, offering Stephenson the post of chief engineer on the new line, which was opened in 1825. The following year Stephenson became engineer for the planned Liverpool-Manchester Railway. A competition was held to determine the best designs. The site of the Trials was a completed section of level line at Rainhill, 9 miles from Liverpool. Only three serious contenders reached the starting line on October 6th, 1829. They were Timothy Hackworth's "Sans Pareil", Braithwaite and Ericsson's "Novelty" and Stephenson's "Rocket".

Grandstands were erected alongside the tracks. The winner was Stephenson's "Rocket" which hauled a specified load 40 times over a distance of one and three-quarter miles and, in fact, reached a speed of 30 miles per hour. Its principles were embodied in all subsequent steam locomotives.

The railway was finally opened by the Duke of Wellington on September 15th 1830. It was the first full scale inter-city railway exclusively powered by locomotives and providing both passenger and freight service.

The Rocket, London Science Museum

Rev. Robert Stirling (1790-1878) became a minister of the Church of Scotland in 1816. His father was an inventor, and Robert invented an external-combustion engine, obtaining a patent for an engine working on what we now know as the Stirling cycle (Section 9.2 in the text and ThermoNet) in 1816, and demonstrating a working model in 1818. A major innovation was the regenerator, or “economizer” as it was called by Stirling.

Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) (1753-1814) was an American who backed the British at the time of the revolution, prompting a move to England where he became a Lieutenant Colonel in the British army. He was commissioned to produce armaments in Bavariua, where he observed a continuous heat release during the boring of cannon. He noted that if there was indeed a “caloric fluid,” it was being continuously created. He also measured the weight of water before and after freezing, finding no change and inferring that any caloric fluid was weightless. Despite his observations, the caloric theory held sway for another 50 years. Thompson also invented the drip coffee maker.

James Thomson (1822-1892) was taught at home by his father, a prominent mathematician. He attended Glasgow University beginning in 1834 when was only twelve years of age, along with his brother William (later Lord Kelvin), age ten. After graduating, James began his career as an engineer in Dublin in 1840, but his poor health forced him to return to Glasgow. He settled as a civil engineer in Belfast, where he became resident engineer to the water commissioners in 1853. In 1857 he was appointed Crown Professor of Civil Engineering at Queen's College where he remained until 1873, when he became Professor of Civil Engineering at Glasgow University.

His early interest was in paddle wheels for boat propulsion, and in his early twenties he began to devise improvements in water wheels. He patented improved designs which were used extensively. He also investigated the properties of swirling fluids, using the results to improve the action of fans, invented a centrifugal pump, and made important improvements in turbines.

Thomson’s 1848 paper, The effect of pressure in lowering the freezing point of water, expounded principles he would use later in explanation of the plasticity of ice. Thomson received honorary degrees from Glasgow, the Queen's University in Ireland, and the University of Dublin. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1877.

Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) came from a poor family. To his parents' credit, they saw that their son had remarkable talents and, lacking the resources to provide an education for him, they sent him to his uncle who was a Camaldolese monk. Brother Jacopo saw that Evangelista was given a sound education until he was old enough to enter a Jesuit College in 1624. He studied mathematics and philosophy there until 1626, and showed that he had outstanding talents. His uncle arranged for him to study at the University of Sapienza in Rome.

Torricelli was fascinated by astronomy and was a strong supporter of Galileo. However the Inquisition ordered Galileo to appear in Rome, and after Galileo's trial in 1633, Torricelli realized that he would be on dangerous ground were he to continue with his interests in the Copernican theory so he deliberately shifted his attention onto mathematical areas which seemed less controversial.

By 1641 Torricelli had completed much of the work which he was to publish in three parts as Opera geometrica in 1644. In October 1641, Torricelli arrived at Galileo's house in Arcetri to work as an assistant. He only had a few months with Galileo, however, before that famous scientist died in January 1642. Torricelli was appointed to succeed Galileo as the court mathematician to Grand Duke Ferdinando II of Tuscany, and held this post until his death.

In 1643 he proposed an experiment, later performed by his colleague Vincenzo Viviani, that demonstrated that atmospheric pressure determines the height to which a fluid will rise in a tube inverted over the same liquid, a concept that led to the development of the barometer.

The existence of a vacuum was a question that had been argued for centuries. Aristotle claimed that a vacuum was a logical contradiction, but difficulties with this had led Renaissance scientists to modify this to the claim that 'nature abhors a vacuum'. Galileo had observed the experimental evidence that a suction pump could only raise water by about nine meters but had given an incorrect explanation.

In De motu gravium which was published as part of Torricelli's 1644 Opera geometrica, Torricelli proved that the flow of liquid through an opening is proportional to the square root of the height of the liquid. Much of Torricelli's mathematical and scientific work has not survived. Hours before his death he tried to ensure that his unpublished manuscripts and letters be given to someone to prepare for publication. Some of Torricelli's manuscripts were lost, but three volumes were published in 1919 and a fourth in 1944, nearly 300 years after Torricelli's death. Material bearing his own signature was destroyed during WW II in the Torricelli Museum in Faenza in 1944.

Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923) observed that the volume occupied by the molecules of a gas and intermolecular forces (now called “van der Waals forces) must be considered in any equation of state describing gas behavior (Section 3.11). He also formulated the Principle of Corresponding States (Section 3.10), indicating that a single three-parameter equation of state should apply to all materials. He received the Nobel Prize in 1910.

James Watt (1736-1819) made the steam engine into a practical device by introducing the external condenser (rather than condensation within the cylinder), the double-acting piston so that power could be developed in both stroke directions (Newcomen’s engines provided power only on the down stroke), and various mechanisms for converting reciprocal motion into rotary motion. With his partner Matthew Boulton (1728-1809), he successfully built and marketed steam engines that inaugurated the Industrial Revolution. Watt defined the horsepower as the rate of work generated by a mill horse, calculating that value as 33,000 pounds of force per minute through a distance of one foot, purposely underestimating this value by a factor of two to avoid dissatisfied customers when rating his engines.

Sir Frank Whittle, left, (1907-1996) and Hans von Ohain, right, (1911-1998) are credited with producing the first practical gas turbine engines for aircraft propulsion, both producing engines that powered jet aircraft during World War II. Von Ohain’s plane was the first to fly, but given wartime secrecy, neither was aware of the other’s work until after the war. (Photo Courtesy U.S. Air Force (AFRL/AFMC))

Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) (left) and Orville Wright (1871-1948) (right) were the sons of a bishop, and grew up in Dayton, Ohio.

During the winter of 1885-1886, Wilbur was hit in the face with a bat while ice-skating. He began to experience heart palpitations which ended hopes for an education at Yale. For the next four years, he remained homebound, probably suffering from depression along with his heart disorder. Orville lost interest in school and went from being a good student to relatively mediocre.

Wilbur and Orville noticed that all the primitive gliders being described in the newspapers of the time lacked suitable controls. They studied and carefully identified the best features of past aircraft and used theory about the lift of wings to design their first craft.

In 1899, Wilbur devised a simple system that twisted or "warped" the wings of a biplane, causing it to roll right or left. They tested this system in a kite, then a series of gliders. The brothers made their first test flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the strong winds helped to launch the gliders and the soft sands helped to cushion crashes.

Their first two gliders, flown in 1900 and 1901, failed to perform as the Wrights had hoped. Published data used in their designs turned out to be unreliable, so during the winter of 1901-1902 Wilbur and Orville built a wind tunnel and conducted experiments to determine the best wing shape. This enabled them to build a glider with sufficient lift, and concentrate on the problem of control. They discovered that a long, narrow wing shape was best. They built a forward elevator to control pitch and twin rudders at the rear to control yaw. They devised a pulley system that warped the shape of the wings in midflight to turn the plane and to stop it from rolling. They used the data from their wind-tunnel experiments to design the first effective airplane props--a pair of 8-ft. propellers that turned in opposite directions. When they discovered that a lightweight gas-powered engine did not exist, they designed and built their own. It produced 12 horsepower and weighed only 152 lbs.

On Dec. 17, 1903, with Orville at the controls, the Wright Flyer lifted off from Kitty Hawk and flew 120 ft. The next day only four newspapers in the U.S. carried news of their achievement — news that was widely dismissed as exaggerated.

Charles Elwood (Chuck) Yeager (1923- ) Before he made history by being the first person to break the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager's exploits during World War II had made him a legend among his fellow flyers. Shot down over occupied France and wounded, he evaded capture and crossed the Pyrenees into neutral Spain, before returning to his squadron in England. By war's end he had downed 13 enemy aircraft, five in a single day.

At the time, no one knew if a fixed-wing aircraft could fly faster than the speed of sound, or if a human pilot could survive the experience. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the experimental Bell X-1 on October 14, 1947, days after cracking several ribs in a horseback riding accident. "It didn't make any difference to me whether I thought the airplane would go faster than sound. I was assigned as a test pilot on it, and it was my duty to fly it."

Yeager broke speed records again and again, testing new planes for the U.S. Air Force. In 1952, he set a new air speed record of 1650 mph, more than twice the speed of sound. He served in both Korea and Vietnam, and helped train the first generation of U.S. astronauts. Along the way, he survived an incredible series of harrowing accidents.