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| Pierre Duhem |
Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) can be considered one of the last
nineteenth-century physicists. Specialist in Thermodynamics, the branch of
physics that dominated the second half of the nineteenth century, introduced
the idea of the chemical potential
at the same time as William Gibbs, expressed in the Gibbs-Duhem equation, which connects the
chemical potential with magnitudes such as the volume, pressure, entropy and
temperature of a chemical mixture. He is considered one of the creators of
physical chemistry and was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
In his scientific work, Duhem confronted Marcellin Berthelot, whose principle of maximum work he opposed. This led
to his doctoral thesis being rejected, and he was denied a teaching position at
the University of Paris. Duhem was finally shown to be right, as Berthelot’s principle
is not generally applicable, for it has many exceptions.
