 Still, it thus seems natural that Boltzmann's contemporaries must have understood him as claiming that the H-theorem followed necessarily from the dynamics of the mechanical gas model. Indeed this is exactly how Boltzmann's claims were understood.  For example, the recommendation written in 1888 for his membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences mentions as Boltzmann's main feat that had proven that, whatever its initial state, a gas must necessarily approach the Maxwellian distribution (Kirsten and Körber 1975, 109). 