Talk:Ludwig Boltzmann
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How did he commit suicide? I heard that he killed himself with a gun. Is this true? 131.215.134.167 00:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
What year did he commit suicide?
- The year of his death, I assume. :) But I'll repeat that fact at the relevant place in the article.
I think the Boltzmann Equation section of the article is too heavy on the specifics of that equation, and too light on his biographical information. I think the equations should go into the relevent scientific articles, where they would feel more at home. In the Boltzmann article should be information about his life, family, schooling, etc. Ed Sanville 21:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
- I agree, but some of the information is historical and not scientific, so it needs to be handled a bit carefully. Suggestions? –Joke137 00:00, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Peronally, I think that putting the suicide front and center is a rather bad idea. Especially for scientist biographies, I would think that one would talk about his works before going into the morbid details... John Sheu 07:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
- Moreover, I very strongly disagree with the statement "The motivation behind the suicide remains unclear, but it may have been related to his lingering resentment over...." There is no way that you can "explain" suicide on the basis of some scientific dispute; that notion is totally unwarranted. A far more probably cause of the suicide is depression, but I do not know enough about Boltzmann's story to back that up, he may have suffered some other mental illness. So unless there is info to back that up (such as letters to his close friends) we have to stay away from that. But I would suggest to move that sentence about his suicide to a new paragraph "Final years" at the end, and edit out any notion at all that the suicide had to do with scientific disputes. JdH 17:41, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Wait a minute! The McTutor biography mentions: "... rapid swings between happiness and sadness"; that is a clear indication of bipolar disorder. That may explain a lot, and in particular the suicide. Maybe we should mention that in that paragraph "Final years"; something like this: It appears that he may have suffered from bipolar disorder. JdH 21:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Much of the physics establishment rejected his thesis about the reality of atoms and molecules — a belief shared, however, by Maxwell in Scotland...
- Is this correct? Maxwell was Scottish, but he worked at Cambridge. 199.74.77.97 08:26, 24 April 2006
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- The Maxwell biography has the following:
- In 1865, Maxwell moved to the estate he inherited from his father in Glenlair, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. In 1868 he resigned his Chair of Physics and Astronomy at King's College, London.
- In 1866, he statistically formulated, independently of Ludwig Boltzmann, the Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory of gases.
- So it looks like that Maxwell was indeed in Scotland at the time formulated his version of the kinetic theory. JdH 09:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
- The Maxwell biography has the following:
[edit] Some problems with footnotes.
Footnote 4 in the text should be about the H-theorem, but instead it links to [3] in the footnotes, which is about Claude Shannon. There is also a footnote 3 in the text that appropriately links to [3]. The actual citation [4] in the footnotes appears to have no relevance. Also, footnote 6 does not seem to appear anywhere in the text.Chymicus 00:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
