Modern Thermodynamics by the Methods of Willard Gibbs

Abstract

IT is an almost universal experience that thermodynamics is harder to understand than ordinary dynamics. For whatever reason this may be, the consequence is that in the textbooks it has not acquired the same standardised routine of development as has dynamics, but is treated from a great number of different angles. As its title suggests, the present work uses the manner of Gibbs, but it takes advantage of the great advances that were consequent on Gibb's work to bring the subject up to date. The author has achieved a very high degrae of success in his intention, and it is perhaps not too much to say that the book possesses not only the virtues, but also some of the defects of the great classic on which it is based. This criticism is not intended to belittle the book, which has much of the same classical character as its original; a cynic once said that a classic may be a great book, but that it is often one that is too dull to read, and though the saying is inappropriate here, still some readers may feel a faint echo of the sentiment, just as they would in reading its prototype. The resemblance of the two is in many ways very close; thus Gibbs never explains the elementary parts of the subject and nor does Guggenheim, though he is kinder than his predecessor in that he gives references for them to books which make entirely satisfactory introductions.

Modern Thermodynamics by the Methods of Willard Gibbs.

By E. A. Guggenheim. Pp. xvi + 206. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1933.) 10s. 6d. net.