Paul Ehrenfest (January 18, 1880 – September 25, 1933) was an Austrian physicist and mathematician, who obtained Dutch citizenship on March 24, 1922. He made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem. On December 21, 1904 he married Russian mathematician Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva (1876–1964), who collaborated with him i...
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Paul Ehrenfest (January 18, 1880 – September 25, 1933) was an Austrian physicist and mathematician, who obtained Dutch citizenship on March 24, 1922. He made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem. On December 21, 1904 he married Russian mathematician Tatyana Alexeyevna Afanasyeva (1876–1964), who collaborated with him in his work. They had two daughters and two sons: Tatyana ('Tanja') (1905–1984), also became a mathematician; Galinka ('Galja') (1910–1979), became an author and illustrator of children's books; Paul Jr. ('Pavlik') (1915–1939), who also became a physicist; and Vassily ('Wassik') (1918–1933).
Paul Ehrenfest was born and grew up in Vienna in a Jewish family that was originally from a town of Loštice in Moravia. His parents, Sigmund Ehrenfest and Johanna Jellinek, had a thriving grocery store. Although the Ehrenfests were not very religious, Paul...
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