Ludwig Boltzmann was born in 1844. He tried to end his life at age 56, and in fact succeeded (if that's the right word) at 62.
On his grave in Vienna's Central Cemetery is the equation "S=k logW" [ref.3].
Without attempting to say what that formula for entropy means, let's describe the man: a short, fat, heavily bearded scholar, with thick glasses and wild hair, who suffered from asthma and neurasthenia, and who exhibited alternating moods of depression and joviality -- and who his fiancee referred to as "my sweet fat darling." Born in Vienna, Boltzmann was, by the age of 25, Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Graz, and at 29, Chair of Mathematics back in his hometown of Vienna. He was a very popular professor, and one of his students was Lisa Meitner (the woman who explained nuclear fission.) [Ref.1.]
It would not be useful in a short essay to say what his famous "H-theorem", derived in his 20s, is, and his writings are difficult. He could, however, be rather funny. In a lecture to the Vienna Philosophical Society he said (quote): 'A writer once said that the most important thing in a literary work is to give it the right title... [Today] I wish to speak about Schopenhauer... and I wanted to imitate his style in my title... so I have chosen this: "Proof that Schopenhauer is a stupid ignorant philosophaster, scribbling nonsense and dispensing hollow verbiage that fundamentally and forever rots people's brains." However, this title was denied me ... and so ... thus arose the [properly printed] title to my talk "On a Thesis of Schopenhauer".'
Boltzmann and his fiancee didn't marry until he was 32, and after that they had 2 sons and 3 daughters [ref.3, p66]. He loved simple home life with his family, and once bought a cow so that his small children could be sure of fresh milk. He enjoyed playing Beethoven on the piano, and was invited to America on 3 occasions. On his final visit, in 1905, he traveled alone. "On a few exceptional days," he wrote, "the sea adorns itself in dress of the finest ultramarine... dark and luminous, and trimmed with milk-white foam ... I wept at the sight of that color; how can a mere color make us cry?" [ref.3, p.204]
At Berkeley he was given the choice of lecturing in German or English, and to the consternation of some students he chose English. We can see why there was consternation; a letter he wrote to an American physicist at that time reads: "... I was extremely glad, if you had the complaisance to write to me, if I succeeded by my small knowledge of the English language to exprime clearly enough my ideas ..."
Unfortunately, Berkeley had been dry in 1905, and when the 61 yr old world-famous author of Boltzmannstatisitics finally boarded a German liner in New York he quickly remedied the situation, writing [ref.3,p.204] "if one totters a little it can all be blamed on the rolling of the ship."
Another line, which we can all identify with, reads: "...the most wonderful moment of the whole expedition is when one reaches home again."
By early summer of the year following his third US visit, both his eyesight and his neurasthenia (exhaustion of the nervous system) were so bad that university officials acknowledged that he could no longer teach. Almost worse, he could no longer play Beethoven. In an attempt at recuperation, he and his wife and daughters traveled to the coastal village of Duino near Trieste.
One afternoon, he remained behind while the rest of the family went to the beach. When they returned, they found he had hung himself from a cross-bar of the hotel window.
References:
1. Partial biographical data from School of Mathematics and Statistics, St Andrews University, Scotland. (Goodsearch)
2. "Ludwig Boltzmann: Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems", edited by Brian McGuiness; D.Reidel Publishing Company, Boston, USA.
3. "Boltzmann's Atom" by David Lindley, The Free Press, NY & London.
Dr. David Nightingale is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the State University of New York at New Paltz and is the co-author of the text, A Short Course in General Relativity.
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