两位中国女物理学家对非平衡统计物理学的重要贡献

Important contributions of M. C. Wang and C.S. Wang Chang to non-equilibrium statistical physics

介绍了两位中国女物理学家王明贞和王承书在 2 0世纪中叶对统计物理发展所作出的重要贡献 .王明贞与乌伦贝克 (Uhlenbeck) 194 5年在ReviewofModernPhysics上发表的有关布朗运动的综述文章[1] 不仅详尽地分析了耦合谐振子的布朗运动特性 ,而且对随机过程做了完整的科学分类 ,至今仍被科学界采用 .王承书对气体分子动理论所作的大量研究结果[2— 7] ,特别是她与乌伦贝克提出的处理多原子分子气体输运系数的王承书 -乌伦贝克方程 ,以及她对麦克斯韦气体的线性化玻尔兹曼方程碰撞算子本征值与本征函数的结果 ,已经成为现代动理学理论的经典内容 .两位中国女物理学家通过她们在物理学史上留下的科学工作 ,为当代中国妇女攀登科学研究高峰树立了榜样 .

In the middle of the 20th century two Chinese women physicists, Ming-Chen Wang and Cheng-Shu Wang Chang made great contributions to statistical physics. The famous review article 'On the theory of the Brownian motion II' by Ming-Chen Wang and G. E. Uhlenbeck published in Rev. of Mod. Phys. in 1945 provided a complete scientific classification of stochastic processes which is still adopted by the scientific community as the standard classification. The Wang-Chang-Uhlenbeck (WCU) equation proposed jointly by C.S. Wang-Chang and Uhlenbeck became the fundamental kinetic equation for the treatment of transport properties of multi-atomic gases with internal degrees of freedom in the physics literature. These important scientific contributions are analyzed and reviewed.