The inventor of Mayer's reagent and one of the founders of thermodynamics, Julius von Mayer was the first to enunciate what phrase, known as the first law of thermodynamics?
Julius von Mayer Julius Robert Mayer (November 25, 1814 – March 20, 1878) was a German physician, chemist and physicist and one of the founders of thermodynamics. He is best known for enunciating in 1841 one of the original statements of the conservation of energy or what is now known as one of the first versions of the first law of thermodynamics, namely that "energy can be neither created nor destroyed". In 1842, Mayer described the vital chemical process now referred to as oxidation as the primary source of energy for any living creature. His achievements were overlooked and priority for the discovery of the "mechanical equivalent of heat" was attributed to James Joule in the following year. He also proposed that plants convert light into chemical energy.
Widom insertion method The Widom insertion method is a statistical thermodynamic approach to the calculation of material and mixture properties. It is named for Benjamin Widom, who derived it in 1963. In general, there are two theoretical approaches to determining the statistical mechanical properties of materials. The first is the direct calculation of the overall partition function of the system, which directly yields the system free energy. The second approach, known as the Widom Insertion method, instead derives from calculations centering on one molecule. The Widom insertion method directly yields the chemical potential of one component rather than the system free energy. This approach is most widely applied in molecular computer simulations but has also been applied in the development of analytical statistical mechanical models.