Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computing

by Harvey Leff

About 120 years ago, James Clerk Maxwell introduced his now legendary hypothetical "demon" as a challenge to the integrity of the second law of thermodynamics. Fascination with the demon persisted throughout the development of statistical and quantum physics, information theory and computer science - and links have been established between Maxwell's demon and each of these disciplines. This book brings together under one cover 25 reprints, including seminal works by Maxwell and William Thomson, historical reviews by Martin Klein, Edward Daub and Peter Helmann. It includes contributions by Leo Szilard, Leon Brillouin, Dennis Gabor and Jerome Rothstein and innovations by Rolf Landauer and Charles Bennett. Until now this material has been scattered throughout divers journals and this book aims to make the key literatures easily available helping with cross-fertilisation of ideas in different disciplines. An annotated chronological bibliography provides a perspective on Maxwell's demon.

Genres: Physics, Science, Nonfiction

364 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990