Some of our code
comments come directly from Space Balls.
In addition to his love of linked lists, Matt
Meineke (the first student who worked on OOPSE)
really liked the word Stamp.
Ludwig Boltzmann
One of the founders of
Statistical Mechanics. Boltzmann is famous for
connecting a thermodynamic quantity (the
Entropy) to the total number of microstates for
system energy levels that can be occupied. The
famous equation that makes this connection,
S = k ln W, is carved on
Boltzmann's tombstone in Vienna.
Joseph Louis Lagrange
The mathematician who gave us
the fundamental principle of
classical mechanics, the principle of least
action. He's particularly important to our
group because of his work on the dynamics of
rigid bodies.
William Rowan Hamilton
Hamilton's equations are a
re-casting of the principle of least action into
a form which uses first order partial
differential equations. Hamilton's ideas also
included a function which is the sum of kinetic
and potential terms (the Hamiltonian)
which has become the fundamental operator
in quantum mechanics. He also came up with the
wonderful quaternion scheme pictured in these
Irish stamps.
Josiah Willard Gibbs
Although the line drawing in the
background is actually Maxwell's work, Gibbs
is a giant in American science. Our
work on water and ice involves thermodynamic
integration, and
we construct phase diagrams using the
Gibbs-Helmholtz equation.
Johannes Diderik van
der Waals
Primarily known for his work on
the equation of state for gases and liquids
(plastered across his forehead in this stamp),
we know him best for his work on intermolecular
attractions and dispersion forces. Besides
electrostatic interactions, dispersion forces
are the main energy function that we simulate in
molecular dynamics calculations.
