Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2018

Keywords

Lars Onsager; C. M. Sliepcevich

Abstract

This paper is a combination of the discussion of two nineteenth century theoretical giants Lars Onsager and C. M. Sliepcevich, their works in general, and specifically the famous reciprocal relations of Onsager with respect to irreversible thermodynamics. Emphasis is placed on their penetrating depth and breadth of analysis so inherently necessary in their problem-solving endeavors. The landscape of their work will be laid out for the reader by a comparison of Onsager’s microscopic statistical mechanics derivation of the famous reciprocal relationships and a macroscopic thermodynamic derivation published by C. M. Sliepsevich that led to considerable discussion in the literature in the 1960’s. Some labelled this discussion a controversy; this paper builds the case that the two derivations are complimentary and supportive of each other. Also, the reader is challenged to decide; were they mathematicians, chemists, physicists, engineers, or thermodynamicists? Whatever their discipline the twenty-first century needs theoreticians such as their likes. This author acknowledges from the outset that little theoretical originality on his part is presented herein unless it is in the unique way in which the comparison of the two derivations is presented The second part of the combination is n of and his graduate students (Sliecevich and Finn, 1963 and Sliepcevich et. al., 1966)

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