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Jacob Hermann and the Kinetic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

The beginning of the kinetic theory of gases is usually assigned to the year 1738, when Daniel Bernouilli's Hydrodynamica appeared at Strasbourg. The famous tenth section of this book pursued some of the consequences of the assumption that ‘elastic fluids’ consist of innumerable tiny particles in rapid motion. It was, as everyone knows, forgotten for many decades.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1965

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References

1 Bernouilli, D., Hydrodynamica sive de vinhus & motibus fluidorum commentarii [etc.]. Argentorati, 1738.Google Scholar

2 The most important paragraphs of this are available in English in The World of Mathematics, ed. Newman, James R. (4 vols., New York, 1956), ii, 774777.Google Scholar

3 Hooykas, R., Arch. Int. Hist. Sci., 1948, 180184.Google Scholar

4 Euler, L., Comm. Acad. Sci. Imp. Petropol., ii (1727), 347.Google Scholar

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6 Partington, J. R., An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry (London, 1949), i, 131.Google Scholar

7 Oehler, E., Ann. der Phys., ix (1880), 512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Not, be it noted, the root mean square.

9 Fig. 149 in the original.

10 Hoppe, Edmund, Geschichte der Physik (Braunschweig, 1926), 176.Google Scholar

11 Amontons, Guillaume, Mém. Acad. roy. Sci. Paris, 1702, 155174.Google Scholar

12 Hydndynamica, 205206.Google Scholar