Thermodynamics and motive power. It marked the start of thermodynamics as a modern science. The first thermodynamic textbook was written in 1859 by William Rankine, originally trained as a physicist and a civil and mechanical engineering professor at the University of Glasgow. The first and second laws of thermodynamics emerged simultaneously in the 1850s, primarily out of the works of William Rankine, Rudolf Clausius, and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). The foundations of statistical thermodynamics were set out by physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, Max Planck, Rudolf Clausius and J. Willard Gibbs. During the years 1873-76 the American mathematical
First law of thermodynamics occur and be calculated simultaneously. Putting the two complementary aspects together, the first law for a particular reversible process can be written This combined statement is the expression the first law of thermodynamics for reversible processes for closed systems. In particular, if no work is done on a thermally isolated closed system we have This is one aspect of the law of conservation of energy and can be stated: If, in a process of change of state of a closed system, the energy transfer is not under a practically zero temperature gradient and practically frictionless, then the process is irreversible.