I found the article on "Massieu functions" almost useless. The article itself is is basically uninformed. It is a sketchy summary of some of the work of J. W. Gibbs and has almost nothing to do with Massieu's contribution to thermodynamics. Most of it was "borrowed" from an equally sketchy eoht page. There is a French Wiki on 'Massieu functions', but it is hardly more than a stub.
I thought I would suggest a collaboration to improve it with the original author, but it seems this person was "banned". Hmmm ...
I have dug up the original articles written by Massieu and a few other related investigators. Massieu's work is in French and I am slowly translating it. This is going to take awhile as I have other project ongoing. Nevertheless, I have done enough to gather what Massieu was up to.
I thought that as I go through this that I could update the article "Massieu Functions".
I have no idea of how to compose a Wiki article so this might take some time. I did some trial runs in my sandbox. At some point I should be able to submit a replacement article.
Zorpoid (talk) 23:20, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
I have received some negative comments on what I proposed. So, I'm having a rethink.
My plan was to write about what Massieu discovered. It seems that I should make a distinctions between "Massieu's functions" and "Massieu Functions".
The "Massieu's functions" are Massieu's discovery. "Massieu functions" are what they became after his discovery.
Massieu's functions, what he called characteristic functions, were something he discovered in 1869 and wrote up. This is what I had planned on writing about. I have gotten my hands on his original article, written in French, and was (slowly) translating them for my own edification. I thought that someone might be interested in this.
Massieu's functions were picked up on by J. W. Gibbs, H. von Helmholtz and P. Duhem and very much developed. Gibbs probably is best known for this. In any case, from Massieu's initial development of his characteristic functions they have become very important in the actual applications of thermodynamics. This is what I am putting under the heading "Massieu functions": without the possessive apostrophe.
"Massieu's functions" is a much easier topic as all one needs to do is "report" on it. "Massieu functions" is much more involved. These are now thought of in terms Legendre transformations of the entropy. I have done some background reading on this and have noticed that the Legendre transformation in thermodynamics, as such, seems to be a product of the earlier part of the XX century. Legendre's original idea had to do with differential equations and in that field of study the Legendre transformation was an early example of a contact transformation. Development on this topic was piecemeal until the work of S. Lie and E. Engle in 1890.
In 1914 there was the work of P. W. Bridgman giving a list of thermodynamic formula, but there was no mention of Legendre. In 1944 Buckley wrote a report on groups of transformations and this included the Legendre transformations. He is referring to the work of F. O. Koenig in the 1930's. Somewhere between the Legendre transformation entered the mainstream of thermodynamics. By the 1960's we see the topic of the Legendre transformations presented in its modern form in Callen's book on thermodynamics. (I used this as an undergraduate back in the day!)
I don't feel comfortable writing on any subject that I have not thoroughly researched. An article that reports on what Massieu discovered ("Massieu's functions") is only a matter of preparing a translation and I have no worries about presenting what I have found. When I get to the point of understanding thermodynamic potentials including the background, uses and other ramifications I might write it up.
Until then I think that all I would propose to do the simpler article. Perhaps a new one entitled "Massieu's Functions" or some such. Perhaps I'll just skip it and give Wiki a pass. I'm thinking about it.