The German physicist Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (1822-1888) was one of the chief architects of thermodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases.

Born on Jan. 2, 1822, in Köslin, Pomerania, R. J. E. Clausius was the sixth son of the 18 children of the Reverend C. E. G. Clausius, a Lutheran pastor and councilor of the Royal Government School Board in Köslin. Young Clausius received much of his primary and secondary education in the private school which his father established in Uckermünde. After graduating from the gymnasium in Stettin, Clausius enrolled at the University of Berlin, and in 1844 he obtained his teacher's certificate.

During the next 6 years Clausius taught physics at the Friedrich Werder Gymnasium in Berlin. He received his doctoral degree in 1848 from the University of Halle with a dissertation which gave for the first time the explanation of the blue sky and red...