On expanding Gibbs' grand ensemble theory - photo 1
On expanding Gibbs' grand ensemble theory - photo 2

On expanding Gibbs' grand ensemble theory

Lot 71
19.10.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
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$ 630
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 1032723
Lot 71 | On expanding Gibbs' grand ensemble theory
Estimate value
$ 1 000 – 2 000
Hendrik Anthony KRAMERS (1894–1952). "Didaktisches zur Verwendung der grand Ensembles in der Statistik," typescript with manuscript annotations, n.p., 1937.

In German. 11 pages, 280 x 220mm (file holes at left margin). Staple bound at left margin. Housed in a portfolio titled in the hand of Abraham PAIS (1918-2000): "Prospectus aankondiging etc. Quantum Chemie van moderne boekwerken," (torn and separated with losses). [With:] KRAMERS, Henrick Anthony, "Toelichtingen bij de voordrachten over quantumchemie," and "Voordrachten over quantum-chemie," mimeograph typescript, n.p., n.d., each bearing the signature of Dutch chemist W. C. B. SMITHUYSEN in red pencil. Two mimeographed typescripts in Dutch, 6 & 192 pp. respectively, 285 x 225mm. Both staple bound at left margin, the second typescript bound in multiple parts.

Anthony Kramer's original typescript for his work exploring how grand ensemble theory could be extended to include quantum mechanical systems—from the papers of Abraham Pais. Published in 1938 in Amsterdam Proc. 41 (1938), Kramer discusses the use of Josiah Willard Gibbs’s “grand ensembles,” a concept which first appeared in his 1902 volume, Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics. The title of Kramers’ paper translates as “Instructions on the use of grand ensembles in statistics,” and, according to his biographer, D. Ter Haar, Kramer was "essentially elaborating on Gibbs’s treatment of grand ensembles and at the same time introducing some new concepts and showing how grand ensemble theory could be extended to cover quantum mechanical systems. The contents of this paper are now standard topics in statistical mechanics textbooks.” (Master of Modern Physics: The Scientific Contributions of H. A. Kramers, Princeton, 1998, p. 71). The manuscript additions, most likely in Kramers’s hand, consist of numbered mathematical equations and mathematical symbols. This typescript, together with Kramer's two mimeographed papers, including the 192 page “Voordrachten over quantum-chemie” (Lectures on quantum chemistry), accompanied by the six page “Toelichtingen bij de voordrachten over quantumchemie” (Notes to the lectures on quantum chemistry, 6pp.), are from the library of Abraham Pais, who had been a close friend of Kramers since their first meeting in 1939. In 1943 Pais, who was Jewish, was forced to go into hiding in Amsterdam to escape arrest. Kramers visited Pais often during this time. One day, in November 1943, the Gestapo came to the house where Pais was hiding. Kramers was there at the time. Pais went quickly to his hiding place and, by good fortune, was not discovered by the Gestapo. After they had left, Pais remained in his hiding place: “…I heard the door to my room, which lay on the other side of my hiding spot, open softly. Someone entered [and] sat down on a small bench [and] began to read, not loud but quite softly. It was Kramers. Earlier he had lent me a volume of Bradley’s Lectures on Shakespeare. What this good man was doing now was reading to me from that book in order to calm my nerves.” (J.J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson. “Hendrik Anthony Kramers.” The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Kramers/). In March 1945 the Germans discovered Pais' hiding place and arrested him. Fortunately for Pais, the Allies had just crossed the Rhine cutting off the rail lines needed to transfer him to a concentration camp and Gestapo released him several days before the end of the war. Provenance: Abraham Pais.
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