AlbaNova and Nordita colloquium

Thermodynamics 201 years  

Prof. Erik Aurell (KTH)

18 september 2025, 15:15 - The Oskar Klein auditorium (FR4)

Abstract: The birth date of thermodynamics as a science is the publication of Sadi Carnot's treatise on heat, in 1824. A year ago the bicentenary was celebrated in a conference at Ecole Polytechnique; Carnot was an alumnus of the school, and his father Lazare Carnot one of its founders.

As physicists today we usually learn thermodynamics as a consequence of statistical mechanics. Or, at least, that is typically how we later remember and understand the topic. Say, if one wants to re-derive the relationship between free energy, entropy and internal energy, a standard approach starts from the Gibbs distribution and the Shannon or von Neumann entropy as the definition of entropy. Those developments however came later. Carnot and after him Clausius developed thermodynamics independently of the atomic hypothesis, to borrow a phrase in the language of that time.

In this colloquium I will give an overview of the thermodynamics of Carnot and Clausius. I will then survey some modern developments in statistical physics which build on that first version of thermodynamics, and some problems which have or could have their thermodynamics, but where the statistical mechanics is still missing. 

About the Speaker: Erik Aurell is Professor of Theoretical Biological Physics at KTH since 2003, and a former Finland Distinguished Professor of the Academy of Finland (2008-2013). Erik gave an invited plenary lecture at the "Sadi Carnot's Legacy" conference, held in Paris in 2024 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. He will here give an updated presentation aimed to a broader audience.