Rudolph Clausius (1822–1888) and His Concept of Mathematical Physics

Rudolph Clausius is well known as a pioneer of the mechanical theory of heat (1857) and as the creator of the concept of entropy (1865). Oftentimes, he is also called the discoverer of the second law of thermodynamics although some argue that this law was already established by Sadi Carnot in 1824 (while still based on the caloric theory). But beyond any doubt, it was Clausius who gave in 1850 the first mathematically correct formulation of the first law (in its differential form that is still valid today, dQ = dU + pdV) and a particularly stringent exposition of both the necessity and independence of the two laws, indeed a logical masterpiece. This paper focuses on his concept of mathematical physics for the development of theoretical physics, contributions that have changed physics well beyond the field of thermodynamics.