Thermodynamics the work of French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1824) who believed that engine efficiency was the key that could help France win the Napoleonic Wars. Scots-Irish physicist Lord Kelvin was the first to formulate a concise definition of thermodynamics in 1854 which stated, "Thermo-dynamics is the subject of the relation of heat to forces acting between contiguous parts of bodies, and the relation of heat to electrical agency." The initial application of thermodynamics to mechanical heat engines was extended early on to the study of chemical compounds and chemical reactions. Chemical thermodynamics studies the nature of the role of
Baron Playfair Baron Playfair Baron Playfair, of St Andrews in the County of Fife, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 3 September 1892 for the scientist and Liberal politician Sir Lyon Playfair. He was succeeded by his only son, the second Baron. He was a Brigadier-General in the British Army. His only son, the Hon. Lyon George Henry Lyon Playfair (1888-1915), was a Captain in the Royal Field Artillery and was killed in action in the First World War, unmarried. Consequently, the title became extinct on the death of the second Baron in 1939.