Arieh Ben-Naim (;

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, 11 July 1934) is a professor of

physical chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mech ...

who retired in 2003 from the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

. He has made major contributions over 40 years to the theory of the structure of

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

, aqueous solutions and

hydrophobic In chemistry, hydrophobicity is the chemical property of a molecule (called a hydrophobe) that is seemingly repelled from a mass of water. In contrast, hydrophiles are attracted to water. Hydrophobic molecules tend to be nonpolar and, thu ...

hydrophilic A hydrophile is a molecule or other molecular entity that is attracted to water molecules and tends to be dissolved by water.Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). ''A Greek-English Lexicon'' Oxford: Clarendon Press. In contrast, hydrophobes are n ...

interactions. He is mainly concerned with theoretical and experimental aspects of the general theory of

liquids Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usually close to th ...

and solutions. In recent years, he has advocated the use of

information theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

to better understand and advance

statistical mechanics In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. Sometimes called statistical physics or statistical thermodynamics, its applicati ...

and

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, Work (thermodynamics), work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed b ...

Contributions to the theory of liquids

Books written by Arieh Ben-Naim: * Water and Aqueous Solutions: Introduction to a Molecular Theory. 1974, (out of print). * Hydrophobic Interactions. 1980, . * Molecular Theory of Solutions. 2006, . * Molecular Theory of Water and Aqueous Solutions: Understanding Water. 2009, . * Molecular Theory of Water and Aqueous Solutions, Part II: The role of Water in

Protein Folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein, after Protein biosynthesis, synthesis by a ribosome as a linear chain of Amino acid, amino acids, changes from an unstable random coil into a more ordered protein tertiary structure, t ...

, Self assembly and

Molecular Recognition Supramolecular chemistry refers to the branch of chemistry concerning Chemical species, chemical systems composed of a integer, discrete number of molecules. The strength of the forces responsible for spatial organization of the system range from w ...

World Scientific World Scientific Publishing is an academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals headquartered in Singapore. The company was founded in 1981. It publishes about 600 books annually, with more than 170 journals in var ...

(2011). * Alice’s Adventures in Water-Land, World Scientific (2011). * The Protein Folding Problem and its Solutions,

(2013) * Alice’s Adventures in Molecular Biology, World Scientific (2013). * Myths and Verities in Protein Folding Theories, World Scientific (2016).

Contributions to statistical mechanics in terms of information theory

In 2017, Ben-Naim posted three articles in

arXiv arXiv (pronounced as "archive"—the X represents the Chi (letter), Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not Scholarly pee ...

. In those articles, three radical ideas were introduced into a field which is considered as classical. The ideas followed from the new definition of

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the micros ...

based on Shannon's measure of information. The three ideas are, briefly, as follows. First, there is no relationship between either entropy or the

second law of thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on Universal (metaphysics), universal empirical observation concerning heat and Energy transformation, energy interconversions. A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spont ...

and the so called

arrow of time An arrow is a fin-stabilized projectile launched by a bow. A typical arrow usually consists of a long, stiff, straight shaft with a weighty (and usually sharp and pointed) arrowhead attached to the front end, multiple fin-like stabilizers ca ...

. This false association between the Second Law and

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

was first suggested by

Arthur Eddington Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lu ...

. Also the Boltzmann's

H-Theorem In classical statistical mechanics, the ''H''-theorem, introduced by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872, describes the tendency of the quantity ''H'' (defined below) to decrease in a nearly-ideal gas of molecules.L. Boltzmann,Weitere Studien über das Wär ...

is not about the time dependence of the entropy, but the time dependence of the Shannon's measure of information. In this respect Boltzmann erred in interpreting his (-)H function as entropy. Second, the application of the concept of entropy to the entire universe is unwarranted. This association has its origin in Clausius' statement that the entropy of the World always increases. Clausius, who is credited for the formulation of the second law, did not and could not understand the molecular interpretation of entropy. Unfortunately, the application of the concept of entropy to the entire universe features in many textbooks and in popular science books. This erroneous application is discussed in great detail in Ben-Naim's recent books: ''The Briefest History of Time'', ''Entropy, the Truth the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth'', and in ''Information, Entropy, Life and the Universe''. Third, the application of entropy and the Second Law to living organisms is totally unwarranted. The most famous statement about

entropy and life Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libr ...

was made by

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum field theory, quantum theory. In particul ...

, in his book ''

What is Life? ''What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell'' is a 1944 science book written for the lay reader by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February1943, under t ...

''. In this book, Schrödinger not only discusses entropy and life and associates entropy with disorder, he also "invents" the concept of "negative entropy," which was later renamed

negentropy In information theory and statistics, negentropy is used as a measure of distance to normality. It is also known as negative entropy or syntropy. Etymology The concept and phrase "''negative entropy''" was introduced by Erwin Schrödinger in ...

Léon Brillouin Léon Nicolas Brillouin (; August 7, 1889 – October 4, 1969) was a French physicist. He made contributions to quantum mechanics, radio wave propagation in the atmosphere, solid-state physics, and information theory. Early life Brilloui ...

. This erroneous application is further discussed in Ben-Naim's books. Ben-Naim is a modern antagonist of the term entropy. He advocates abandoning the word

altogether, and replacing it with "missing information". He also indicates that the Kelvin temperature scale artificially introduces the units of thermodynamic entropy. Because this temperature scale was introduced before the atomic, microscopic nature of matter was widely accepted, the

Boltzmann constant The Boltzmann constant ( or ) is the proportionality factor that relates the average relative thermal energy of particles in a ideal gas, gas with the thermodynamic temperature of the gas. It occurs in the definitions of the kelvin (K) and the ...

was necessary. ''S'' = ''k''_Blog(''W'') could be expressed simply as ''S'' = log(''W''), if the energy units for temperature ''k''_B''T'' were used. An example of the insight that

can bring to

is the rederivation of the Sackur-Tetrode equation. It results from stacking the missing information due to four terms: positional uncertainty, momenta uncertainty, quantum mechanical

uncertainty principle The uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle, is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position a ...

and the indistinguishability of the particles. Books written by Arieh Ben-Naim on entropy and statistical mechanics include: * Entropy Demystified: The Second Law Reduced to Plain Common Sense,

(2008) * A Farewell to Entropy. Statistical Thermodynamics Based on Information, World Scientific (2008). * Discover Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, World Scientific (2010). * Entropy and the Second Law: Interpretation and (2012). . * Statistical Thermodynamics, with Applications to Life Sciences, World Scientific (2014) * Discover Probability; How to Use it, How to Avoid Misusing it and How it Affects Every Aspect of Your Life, World Scientific (2014). * Information, Entropy, Life and the Universe. What we know and what we do not know, World Scientific (2015) * The Briefest History of Time: The History of Histories of Time, And the misconstrued association between Entropy and Time, World Scientific (2016). * Entropy, The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, World Scientific (2016) * Modern Thermodynamics, World Scientific (2016) * The Four Laws that do not Drive the Universe, For the Curious and intelligent, World Scientific (2017)

References

External links

Personal website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ben-Naim, Arieh 1934 births Living people Jewish chemists Israeli physical chemists Thermodynamicists