The Boltzmann Equation

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (1844–1906), the Austrian physicist whose greatest achievement was in the development of statistical mechanics, which explains and predicts how the properties of atoms and molecules (microscopic properties) determine the phenomenological (macroscopic) properties of matter such as the viscosity, thermal conductivity, and diffusion coefficient. The distribution function (probability of finding particles within a certain range of velocities at a certain range of locations at a given time) replaces tagging each particle, as in molecular dynamic simulations. The method saves the computer resources drastically.