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
Laws of thermodynamics third law of thermodynamics is sometimes stated as follows: At zero temperature the system must be in a state with the minimum thermal energy. This statement holds true if the perfect crystal has only one state with minimum energy. Entropy is related to the number of possible microstates according to: Where "S" is the entropy of the system, "k" Boltzmann's constant, and "Ω" the number of microstates (e.g. possible configurations of atoms). At absolute zero there is only 1 microstate possible ("Ω"=1 as all the atoms are identical for a pure substance and as a result all orders are identical