Hans Ziegler was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, on 5 September 1910, and died in Estes Park, Colorado, on 5 August 1985. He was raised and spent his early career in Switzerland but much of his later career in the United States.
Hans Ziegler was an academic and was the author of textbooks on engineering and thermodynamics, which were translated into other languages, and re-issued in new editions.
In
non-equilibrium thermodynamics
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with physical systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium but can be described in terms of macroscopic quantities (non-equilibrium state variables) that represent an ex ...
, he considered a
'principle of maximum dissipation rate'. He was also an early proponent of a
'principle of maximum rate of entropy production', which is closely related to a 'principle of maximum dissipation rate'. The range of applicability and validity or invalidity of these 'principles' has been examined and debated by many others,
[Grandy, W.T., Jr (2008). ''Entropy and the Time Evolution of Macroscopic Systems'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, .] and their eventual scientific status is yet to be settled.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziegler, Hans
1910 births
1985 deaths
Swiss expatriates in the United States
Swiss physicists
Swiss science writers