Page "Statistical mechanics" Paragraph 26

In 1859, after reading a paper on the diffusion of molecules by Rudolf Clausius, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell formulated the Maxwell distribution of molecular velocities, which gave the proportion of molecules having a certain velocity in a specific range.

This was the first-ever statistical law in physics.

Five years later, in 1864, Ludwig Boltzmann, a young student in Vienna, came across Maxwell ’ s paper and was so inspired by it that he spent much of his life developing the subject further.