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Marian Smoluchowski Ritter von Smolan
J. Aerosol Sci., Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 113-114, 1987. Printed in Great Britain.
MARIAN
0021-8502/87 $3.00 +0.00 Pergamon Journals Ltd.
SMOLUCHOWSKI
RITTER
YON S M O L A N
THE MAN AND SCIENTIST ELECTED AS FIGURE-HEAD OF AEROSOL SCIENCE* O. PREINING Institut fiir Experimentalphysik,Universit/itWien, A 1090 Wien, Strudlhofgasse4, Austria
Marian Smoluchowski was born on 28 May 1872. His father Wilhelm was a juris doctor of the Jaqiellonian University at Cracow and at the time of Marian's birth 'Hofrat in der k.k. Cabinetskanzlei'; his mother Teofila was born a Szczepanowski. He attended the Theresianum, a famous school in Vienna and studied Physics and Mathematics during the academic years 1890/91-1893/94 at the University of Vienna and graduated sub auspiciis Imperatoris in 1895. In his Ph.D. thesis the elastic constants of soft materials like wax, paraffin or shellac were measured using an acoustic method. Smoluchowski left Vienna for 2 years to visit three laboratories in Europe. His first stop was Paris, to work with Lippmann. It is quite certain that he had contacts with Perrin and Langevin. He finished two papers in Paris but got disappointed by Lippman's disinterest in his work and left Paris in July 1896 to go on to Lord Kelvins Laboratory at Glasgow. There he stayed until April 1897 to work on the ionisation of gases by X-rays and by uranium, and became Research Fellow of the University of Glasgow. After that he went to Warburg in Berlin to work on 'Thermal conduction of gases at high rarefaction' and returned to Vienna in August 1887. He got the venia legendi at the University of Vienna in 1898 and applied in February 1899, upon invitation by the Polish philosopher Prof. Kazimierz Twardowski of Lvov University, for transfer to that University and this was granted. Smoluchowski expressed his obligation as a native Pole to help the underdeveloped and divided Poland. He became Professor (auBerordentlicher Professor), just a year later and was then, at the age of 28, the youngest university professor of the Austrian Empire. He stayed in Lvov, where he became full professor in 1903, until 1913 when he accepted a call to the chair of Experimental Physics at the Jagiellonian University at Cracow in May of that year. Here he remained until his unexpected death on 5 September, 1917. From the turn of the century, there was the really productive period of Smoluchowski's life, the everlasting contributions to science: the papers on Brownian motion, coagulation, fluctuations and critical opalescence were as well written as his less known very last paper, posthumously published in 1918: 'On the concept of chance and the origin of probabilistic laws in physics.' Smoluchowski's first work pertinent to aerosol science was his 1906 paper on the kinetics theory of Brownian motion [1]. He also realized the importance of Stokes law and its limitations, which he treated in two contributions in 1911 and 1912 [2, 3]; these results are reported e.g. by Fuchs in his famous 1964 book The Mechanics of Aerosols [4]. Smoluchowski published on Brownian motion, diffusion and coagulation in 1914 [5], 1915 [6, 7, 8], 1916 [9, 10] and 1917 [11]. The 1916 papers became real classics and were reprinted in Ostwald's Klassiker der Exakten Naturwissenschaften. Smoluchowski's papers are still frequently quoted today, some of the individual papers were quoted 5-30 times a year between 1974 and 1985, as a computer search revealed. The studies on kinetics theory, the second law and Brownian motion made Smoluchowski see things his contemporaries could not imagine. He had the mathematical model *Short version of a talk given at the occasion of the First Smoluchowski Award celebration at the International Aerosol Conference, West Berlin 2 ~ 2 6 September 1986: Aerosob--Formation and Reactivity, Pergamon Press, 1986. The paper is given in full in the Proceedings.
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O. PREINING
of a Brownian trail with infinitely small linear section in mind and his ideas came close to B. B. Mandelbrot's concept of fractals [12]. In the discussion of 1912 [9, see page 1080] after his paper 'Experimentally provable molecular phenomena contradicting usual thermodynamics' he even precedes Szillard's paper of 1929 [13] and L. Brillouin's discussion in Science and Information Theory, 1962 [14], regarding the actions of Maxwell's Demon. In general we have to see in Smoluchowski the pioneer who opened the complex phenomena basic to aerosol science, e.g. Brownian motion and coagulation, to scientific investigations; hence he was historically the first theorist and mathematical physicist in the field of aerosol science. REFERENCES 1. Zur kinetischen Theorie d. Brownschen Molekularbewegung und der Suspensionen. Ann. d. Phys. 21, 756780 (1906). 2. Ober die Wechselwirkung yon Kugeln, die sich in einer z/ihen Flfissigkeit bewegen. Bull. Acad. Crac., serie A, 28 39 (1911). 3. On the practical applicability of Stokes Law of resistance and its modifications required in certain cases. International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, August 1912. 4. Fuchs N. A. (1964) The mechanics of aerosols. Pergamon, Oxford. 5. Studien fiber Molekularstatistik yon Emulsionen und deren Zusammenhang mit der Brownschen Bewegung. Sitzungsber. d. Wien Akad. 123, 2381-2405 (1914). 6. Ober "durchschnittliche maximale Abweichung' bei Brownscher Molekularbewegung und Brillouin's Diffusionsversuche. Phys. Z. 16, 318-321 (1915). 7. Notiz fiber die Berechnung der Brownschen Molkularbewegung bei der Ehrenhaft-Millikanschen Versuchsanordnung. Phys. Z. 16, 318 321 (1915). 8. Ober Brown'sche Molkularbewegung unter Wirkung ~uBerer Kr/ifte und deren Zusammenhang mit der verallgemeinerten Diffusionsgleichung. Ann. d. Phys. 48, 1103 1112 (1915). 9. Studien iiber Kolloidstatistik und deren Mechanismus der Diffusions. Kolloid Z. 18, 48 54 (1916). 10. Drei Vortrfige fiber Diffusion, Brownschue Molekularbewegung und Koagulation von Kolloidteilchen. Phys. Z, 17, 557n 571, 585.599 (1916). 11. Versuch einer mathematischen Theorie der Koagulationskinetik kolloider L6sungen. Z. phys. Chem. 92, 129 168 (1917). 12. Mandelbrot B. B. (1982) The Fractal Geometry oJ' Nature. Freeman, San Francisco. 13. Szillard L. (1929) Ober die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen. Z. Physik 53, 840. 14. Brillouin L. (1962) Science and Information Theory. Academic Press, New York.
MARIAN
0021-8502/87 $3.00 +0.00 Pergamon Journals Ltd.
SMOLUCHOWSKI
RITTER
YON S M O L A N
THE MAN AND SCIENTIST ELECTED AS FIGURE-HEAD OF AEROSOL SCIENCE* O. PREINING Institut fiir Experimentalphysik,Universit/itWien, A 1090 Wien, Strudlhofgasse4, Austria
Marian Smoluchowski was born on 28 May 1872. His father Wilhelm was a juris doctor of the Jaqiellonian University at Cracow and at the time of Marian's birth 'Hofrat in der k.k. Cabinetskanzlei'; his mother Teofila was born a Szczepanowski. He attended the Theresianum, a famous school in Vienna and studied Physics and Mathematics during the academic years 1890/91-1893/94 at the University of Vienna and graduated sub auspiciis Imperatoris in 1895. In his Ph.D. thesis the elastic constants of soft materials like wax, paraffin or shellac were measured using an acoustic method. Smoluchowski left Vienna for 2 years to visit three laboratories in Europe. His first stop was Paris, to work with Lippmann. It is quite certain that he had contacts with Perrin and Langevin. He finished two papers in Paris but got disappointed by Lippman's disinterest in his work and left Paris in July 1896 to go on to Lord Kelvins Laboratory at Glasgow. There he stayed until April 1897 to work on the ionisation of gases by X-rays and by uranium, and became Research Fellow of the University of Glasgow. After that he went to Warburg in Berlin to work on 'Thermal conduction of gases at high rarefaction' and returned to Vienna in August 1887. He got the venia legendi at the University of Vienna in 1898 and applied in February 1899, upon invitation by the Polish philosopher Prof. Kazimierz Twardowski of Lvov University, for transfer to that University and this was granted. Smoluchowski expressed his obligation as a native Pole to help the underdeveloped and divided Poland. He became Professor (auBerordentlicher Professor), just a year later and was then, at the age of 28, the youngest university professor of the Austrian Empire. He stayed in Lvov, where he became full professor in 1903, until 1913 when he accepted a call to the chair of Experimental Physics at the Jagiellonian University at Cracow in May of that year. Here he remained until his unexpected death on 5 September, 1917. From the turn of the century, there was the really productive period of Smoluchowski's life, the everlasting contributions to science: the papers on Brownian motion, coagulation, fluctuations and critical opalescence were as well written as his less known very last paper, posthumously published in 1918: 'On the concept of chance and the origin of probabilistic laws in physics.' Smoluchowski's first work pertinent to aerosol science was his 1906 paper on the kinetics theory of Brownian motion [1]. He also realized the importance of Stokes law and its limitations, which he treated in two contributions in 1911 and 1912 [2, 3]; these results are reported e.g. by Fuchs in his famous 1964 book The Mechanics of Aerosols [4]. Smoluchowski published on Brownian motion, diffusion and coagulation in 1914 [5], 1915 [6, 7, 8], 1916 [9, 10] and 1917 [11]. The 1916 papers became real classics and were reprinted in Ostwald's Klassiker der Exakten Naturwissenschaften. Smoluchowski's papers are still frequently quoted today, some of the individual papers were quoted 5-30 times a year between 1974 and 1985, as a computer search revealed. The studies on kinetics theory, the second law and Brownian motion made Smoluchowski see things his contemporaries could not imagine. He had the mathematical model *Short version of a talk given at the occasion of the First Smoluchowski Award celebration at the International Aerosol Conference, West Berlin 2 ~ 2 6 September 1986: Aerosob--Formation and Reactivity, Pergamon Press, 1986. The paper is given in full in the Proceedings.
113
1 14
O. PREINING
of a Brownian trail with infinitely small linear section in mind and his ideas came close to B. B. Mandelbrot's concept of fractals [12]. In the discussion of 1912 [9, see page 1080] after his paper 'Experimentally provable molecular phenomena contradicting usual thermodynamics' he even precedes Szillard's paper of 1929 [13] and L. Brillouin's discussion in Science and Information Theory, 1962 [14], regarding the actions of Maxwell's Demon. In general we have to see in Smoluchowski the pioneer who opened the complex phenomena basic to aerosol science, e.g. Brownian motion and coagulation, to scientific investigations; hence he was historically the first theorist and mathematical physicist in the field of aerosol science. REFERENCES 1. Zur kinetischen Theorie d. Brownschen Molekularbewegung und der Suspensionen. Ann. d. Phys. 21, 756780 (1906). 2. Ober die Wechselwirkung yon Kugeln, die sich in einer z/ihen Flfissigkeit bewegen. Bull. Acad. Crac., serie A, 28 39 (1911). 3. On the practical applicability of Stokes Law of resistance and its modifications required in certain cases. International Congress of Mathematicians, Cambridge, August 1912. 4. Fuchs N. A. (1964) The mechanics of aerosols. Pergamon, Oxford. 5. Studien fiber Molekularstatistik yon Emulsionen und deren Zusammenhang mit der Brownschen Bewegung. Sitzungsber. d. Wien Akad. 123, 2381-2405 (1914). 6. Ober "durchschnittliche maximale Abweichung' bei Brownscher Molekularbewegung und Brillouin's Diffusionsversuche. Phys. Z. 16, 318-321 (1915). 7. Notiz fiber die Berechnung der Brownschen Molkularbewegung bei der Ehrenhaft-Millikanschen Versuchsanordnung. Phys. Z. 16, 318 321 (1915). 8. Ober Brown'sche Molkularbewegung unter Wirkung ~uBerer Kr/ifte und deren Zusammenhang mit der verallgemeinerten Diffusionsgleichung. Ann. d. Phys. 48, 1103 1112 (1915). 9. Studien iiber Kolloidstatistik und deren Mechanismus der Diffusions. Kolloid Z. 18, 48 54 (1916). 10. Drei Vortrfige fiber Diffusion, Brownschue Molekularbewegung und Koagulation von Kolloidteilchen. Phys. Z, 17, 557n 571, 585.599 (1916). 11. Versuch einer mathematischen Theorie der Koagulationskinetik kolloider L6sungen. Z. phys. Chem. 92, 129 168 (1917). 12. Mandelbrot B. B. (1982) The Fractal Geometry oJ' Nature. Freeman, San Francisco. 13. Szillard L. (1929) Ober die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen. Z. Physik 53, 840. 14. Brillouin L. (1962) Science and Information Theory. Academic Press, New York.