Einstein and the foundation of statistical mechanics

In three papers (1902–1904), Albert Einstein developed the essential principles of the statistical mechanical approach to thermodynamics before he was twenty-five years old. Einstein's work was inspired by Ludwig Boltzmann's Vorlesungen über Gastheorie, but it was completely independent of J. Williard Gibb's (whose monograph on statistical mechanics was published in 1902). In certain respects, especially in the search for the existence of atoms of matter and quanta of radiation by a study of fluctuations, Einstein's work went beyond Boltzmann's and Gibb's. For Einstein, his study of the principles of statistical thermodynamics was merely a prelude to his achievements in quantum theory and brownian motion.