Rudolf Clausius

1822-1888

Clausius was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics.

By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle known as the Carnot cycle, he put the theory of heat on a truer and sounder basis.

His most important paper, On the mechanical theory of heat, published in 1850, first stated the basic ideas of the second law of thermodynamics.

In 1865 he introduced the concept of entropy.