Boltzmann’s cow

Ludwig Boltzmann taught Lise Meitner, co-discoverer of nuclear fission. She was enthusiastic about his teaching, reporting: “After each lecture it seemed to us as if we had been introduced to a new and wonderful world, such was the enthusiasm that he put into what he taught.”

Boltzmann was mercurial and Max Planck experienced a different side of him from Meitner. Planck recalled how Boltzmann responded when Ernst Zermelo, an able student of Planck’s, criticised Boltzmann’s work:

…he answered young Zermelo in a tone of biting sarcasm, which was meant partly for me, too. This was how Boltzmann assumed that ill-tempered tone which he continued to exhibit toward me, on later occasions as well, both in his publications and in our personal correspondence.

Whilst giving a series of lectures at Berkeley, Boltzmann bemoaned the prohibition on the sale of alcohol, reporting his “stomach rebelled” and he took to smuggling wine bottles from a shop in Oakland. He was a critic of American cuisine describing oatmeal as: “an indescribable paste on which people might fatten geese in Vienna - then again, perhaps not, since I doubt the Viennese geese would be willing to eat it.”

Whilst living in Graz, Boltzmann decided his children needed more milk. He took the logical step of buying a cow at a market and was seen wandering the streets with the animal unsure how to get it home. To learn how to milk the cow, rather than talking to a farmer, he consulted a zoology professor.

Given these events, it is unsurprising that one of his peers described Boltzmann as a “powerful man but childlike to the point of childishness”.