Laws of thermodynamics
Circa 1797, Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson) showed that endless mechanical action can generate indefinitely large amounts of heat from a fixed amount of working substance thus challenging the caloric theory of heat, which held that there would be a finite amount of caloric heat/energy in a fixed amount of working substance. The first established thermodynamic principle, which eventually became the second law of thermodynamics, was formulated by Sadi Carnot in 1824. By 1860, as formalized in the works of those such as Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, two established principles of thermodynamics had evolved, the first principle and the second principle, later restated as thermodynamic laws. By 1873, for example, thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, in his memoir "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids", clearly stated the first two absolute laws of thermodynamics. Some textbooks throughout the 20th century have numbered the laws differently. In some fields removed from chemistry, the second law was considered to deal with the efficiency of heat engines only, whereas what was called the third law dealt with entropy increases. Directly defining zero points for entropy calculations was not considered to be a law. Gradually, this separation was combined into the second law and the modern third law was widely adopted.
Wassim Michael Haddad
Haddad's "Thermodynamics: A Dynamical Systems Approach", Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, develops a novel and unique system-theoretic framework of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is one of the bedrock disciplines of physics and engineering, yet its foundation has been lacking rigor and clarity as very eloquently pointed out by the American mathematician and natural philosopher Clifford Truesdell. Over the years, researchers from the systems and control community have acknowledged the need for developing a solid foundation for thermodynamics. Haddad's book brings together a vast range of ideas and tools to construct a powerful framework for thermodynamics. He uses dissipativity theory, nonstandard Lyapunov ideas, and positive system theory in his work. His framework captures all of the key ideas of thermodynamics, including its fundamental laws, providing a harmonization of classical thermodynamics with classical mechanics. The work is a "technical masterpiece" that brings to bear and extends the kind of applied analysis that is hallmark to the dynamical systems and control community. In particular, Haddad's exposition brings coherence and clarity to an extremely important classical area of science and engineering. Extensions of this work are reported in.