Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The foundations of 100 years of physics
Gibbs was one of the few great American mathematical physicists. In this book you will find a complete treatment of dyadic operators that is noticeably absent from most books that came after it.
It was Gibbs himself, along with Oliver Heaviside that turned away from Hamilton's quarternion algebra and decided to invent the vector calculus that every physics student since then has learned and used in their careers. I believe that if they did not do this, then physics would have only been accessible to very few of the most brilliant, because almost no one was ready for quarternions or Clifford Algebra that we now see used today. Vector Calculus was the "midwife" of mathematical physics and analytical geometry, and because of its physically intuitive quality, it enabled "the rest of us" to learn this, the finest of the sciences.
I heartily recommend this book and urge its complete study. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Classic Still Worth Reading
Published in 1901, this is a seminal work in statistical mechanics that sat the stage for all later development of the subject.

It is not easy to read for several reasons.

First, the typesetting has been taken from the original 1901 plates which have not worn well in some places. The printing itself is of high quality, but as the typeface is rather small and very small for footnotes, some characters are very hard to make out.

Second, Gibbs, being a product of the nineteenth century, has a tendency towards the grandiloquent and the use of sentences that are overly long.

Third, Gibbs' approach with classical mechanics and mathematical notation, particularly with respect to partial derivatives, is dated.

Finally, the subject matter is rather challenging in and of itself.

Nonetheless, it is quite nice to actually read the words of the master for one's self. This book is referred to so often in later works that reading it is almost a necessity for the serious student of the subject at some point.

Essentially, this book is a deep, probing, and very logically constructed look at canonical ensembles. Indeed, this is the book where canonical ensembles were defined in the first place. Naturally, the treatment is completely classical as quantum mechanics didn't even exist when this book was written.

It is quite interesting to see the justification that Gibbs provides for introducing the law of canonical distribution, namely that it is simple and leads to strong analogies with thermodynamics. That is, Gibbs does not in any way attempt to justify it on the basis of classical mechanics itself.

The interested student should have a strong background in classical mechanics, particularly Hamilton's formulation, and thermodynamics, and should definitely not be trying to learn statistical mechanics for the first time.

Still valuable and thought provoking, but not absolutely essential. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more