Approaches to Entropy

This is a book about thermodynamics, not history, but it adopts a semi-historical approach in order to highlight different approaches to entropy. The book does not follow a rigid temporal order of events, nor it is meant to be comprehensive. It includes solved examples for a solid understanding. The division into chapters under the names of key players in the development of the field is not intended to separate these individual contributions entirely, but to highlight their different approaches to entropy. This structure helps to provide a different view-point from other text-books on entropy.

• Heat transfer
• Sackur-Tetrode equation
• Thermodynamics
• Helmholtz free energy
• Gibbs fee energy
• Entropy and probability
• Microcanonical ensemble
• Partition functions
• Entropy of radiation
• Szilard’s engine
• Quantum statistics
• Landauer’s principle
• Rotational partition function
• Gibbs’s paradox
• von Neumann entropy

“In Approaches to Entropy, Tame (Yokohama City Univ., Japan) surveys entropy concepts in various areas, including, but not limited to, statistical mechanics, radiation, information theory, and biological systems. … This book may serve as a standalone review of a wide range of entropy topics for advanced students. The book’s strength also lies in a number of useful problems and solutions as a means for assessing students' mastery of the concepts discussed. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above.” (R. N. Laoulache, Choice, April, 2019)

• Drug Design Laboratory, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan

  Jeremy R. H. Tame

Jeremy R. H. Tame is currently a professor at the Drug Design Laboratory at Yokohama City University in Japan. After graduating from Cambridge University in England, he moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Following a short period of work with Nobel Prize winner Max Perutz, he joined Kiyoshi Nagai’s group. His group focuses on biophysical studies of how proteins fold and function. His other research interests include x-ray crystallography, protein design and thermodynamics of protein–ligand binding.

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