Boltzmann thought he was isolated about the "existence of atoms" and committed suicide in Duino, near Trieste, Italy, on September 5, 1906.
(1844-1906) Austrian physicist. He was born in February 1844 in Vienna. He started his education in Linz and continued at the University of Vienna as an assistant to Josef Stelan, who developed the radiation theory named after him. When he completed his doctorate in 1867 and examined Maxwcll's studies on electrodynamic theory, upon Stefan's suggestion, his lifelong interest in the works of this theorist, one of the most important physicists of the 19th century, began. He was a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Graz in 1869-1873. Between 1873 and 1876 he returned to the University of Vienna as a professor of mathematics. In his articles published in Graz and Vienna, he tried to explain many aspects of thermodynamics, especially the second law, using the kinetic theory, which assumes that gases are composed of molecules. His work culminated in two papers published at the Vienna Academy of Sciences in 1877 when he returned to Graz as a professor of experimental physics.
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics.
In his article titled "Some Problems in the Mechanical Theory of Heat", which he presented to the Academy on January 11, 1877, Boltzmann argued that the theory that entropy can only increase is not like Newton's theory of motion, but arises from the uncertainty in the choice of the initial conditions of systems consisting of many particles. Due to the large number of gas molecules, statistical methods had to be used to determine the locations and velocities of gas molecules, and accurate predictions could only be made to the extent allowed by statistical rules. Boltzmann brought these views to the necessary mathematical foundations in his 1877 article "The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Mechanical Theory of Heat and the Calculus of Probabilities". In particular, he showed that the entropy of a thermodynamic system is proportional to the probability that all particles in the system form the state in question. These works were the most important contributions to thermodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases until the 1920s when the quantum theory was to be developed. After 1877 he shifted his interest to Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics; While working as a professor of theoretical physics in Munich between 1891 and 1893, he wrote a book on the subject. Boltzmann was appointed professor of physics at the University of Vienna in 1894, replacing his teacher Stefan, and remained in that position for six years. He wrote his most important book, "Lessons on Gas Theory", in Vienna between 1896 and 1898. In 1899 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in London.
Boltzmann, while at the University of Leipzig in 1900-1902, became overly sensitive to any criticism of his work. At that time, a movement in Leipzig, which was spokesperson by Wilhelm Ostwald, opposed the theory of atoms and molecules and began to attack Boltzmann's work from this perspective. The main source of this movement was the "idealistic philosophy" of Ernst Mach. Uncomfortable with this situation, Boltzmann decided to leave Leipzig and returned to Vienna, happy that the then-retired Mach's chair was offered to him.
But Mach was still alive and continuing his attacks on atomic theory. Boltzmann was seen as the last defender of the atomic theory in continental Europe, which Mach declared bankrupt. Around this time, Boltzmann himself had begun to see his entire life's work as a subject abandoned by the scientific world. However, in those days, the radioactive decay of atoms was observed by Becquerel and definite clues were beginning to be obtained that atoms were real. However, Boltzmann felt that he had been pushed into solitude and committed suicide on September 5, 1906, in Duino, near Trieste, Italy.
Boltzmann's doctoral years coincided with one of the most vivid periods of theoretical physics.