In 1935, the first scientific work devoted to the thermodynamics of biological systems was published - the book of the Hungarian-Russian theoretical biologist Erwin S. Bauer (1890-1938) "Theoretical Biology". E. Bauer formulated the "Universal Law of Biology" in the following edition: "All and only living systems are never in equilibrium and perform constant work at the expense of their free energy against the equilibrium required by the laws of physics and chemistry under existing external conditions". This law can be considered the 1st law of thermodynamics of biological systems.
In 1957, German-British physician and biochemist Hans Krebs   and British-American biochemist Hans Kornberg in the book "Energy Transformations in Living Matter" first described the thermodynamics of biochemical reactions. In their works, H. Krebs and Hans Kornberg showed how in living cells, as a result of biochemical reactions, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is synthesized from food, which is the main source of energy of living organisms (the Krebs–Kornberg cycle).
In 2006, the Israeli-Russian scientist Boris Dobroborsky (1945) published the book "Thermodynamics of Biological Systems", in which the general principles of functioning of living organisms from the perspective of nonequilibrium thermodynamics were formulated for the first time and the nature and properties of their basic physiological functions were explained.