Statistical Mechanics

Benjamin Widom is Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, New York. He received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from that University (where he studied with S. H. Bauer) in 1953, and was a postdoctoral associate with O. K. Rice at the University of North Carolina, before joining the Cornell chemistry faculty in 1954. Professor Widom's research speciality is statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, particularly as applied to problems of phase equilibria, critical phenomena, and interfacial structure and thermodynamics. He is co-author with Professor Sir John Rowlinson, of the University of Oxford, of the research monograph Molecular Theory of Capilliarity (1982). Professor Widom has held numerous prestigious visitorships, including ones at Amsterdam (van der Waals Professor), Oxford (IBM Visiting Professor of Theoretical Chemistry), Leiden (Lorentz Professor), and Utrecht (Kramers/Debye Professor). He has had many awards in recognition of his research in statistical mechanics, including the Boltzmann Medal of the IUPAP Commission on Statistical Physics and the Onsager Medal of the University of Trondheim. He has honorary degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Utrecht, and has been elected to membership or fellowship of several scholarly academies including the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

• 1. The Boltzmann Distribution Law and statistical thermodynamics; 2. The ideal gas; 3. Chemical equilibrium in ideal-gas mixtures; 4. Ideal harmonic solid and black-body radiation; 5. Third law; 6. Non-ideal gas; 7. The liquid state; 8. Quantum ideal gas.

'Textbooks of statistical thermodynamics for chemists are notoriously thin on the ground as the subject, being so mathematical, is not to the taste of most chemists. Professor Widom has written a survey that many chemists will find accessible, useful, and modern. … The strengths of this excellent text are its accessibility, its authority, the range of topics treated, and its pedagogical style.' Peter Atkins, University of Oxford