Kenneth George Denbigh attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School.
College/University
Gallery of Kenneth Denbigh
Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Kenneth George Denbigh studied chemistry at Leeds University, where he graduated with first-class honors in 1932, and in 1934 completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Kenneth George Denbigh studied chemistry at Leeds University, where he graduated with first-class honors in 1932, and in 1934 completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree.
(This book is about an important issue which has arisen wi...)
This book is about an important issue which has arisen within two of the branches of physical science - namely thermodynamics and statistical mechanics - where the notion of entropy plays an essential role. A number of scientists and information theorists have maintained that entropy is a subjective concept and is a measure of human ignorance. Such a view, if it is valid, would create some profound philosophical problems and would tend to undermine the objectivity of the scientific enterprise. Whilst the present volume is not a treatise on thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, all relevant steps in the building up of these disciplines are carefully scrutinised and it is concluded that the charge of subjectivity cannot be upheld. The widely adopted view that entropy is a measure of disorder, or of lack of information, is shown to be ambiguous, although it may be of use in certain contexts.
Kenneth George Denbigh was a British chemist, scientist, educator, and author. He was the pioneer in the formulation of the concept of "chemical reactor engineering", in the application of chemical thermodynamics to industrial processes, and in the detailed investigation of the thermodynamics of the steady state.
Background
Kenneth George Denbigh was born on May 30, 1911, in Luton, England, United Kingdom. He was the only son of George James Denbigh and his wife Emily (née Higgins). They were natives of Wakefield in Yorkshire and lived there for most of their lives. Both came from farming and industrial backgrounds. Kenneth’s father had studied at Leeds University and had taken a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1905 and a Master of Science in 1919. He was a schoolmaster in Luton at the time of Kenneth’s birth but then became a plant manager of the chemical works of Messrs Brotherton (now Brotherton Speciality Products), first at Workington, and, from 1920, at Wakefield. Later he became a director of the company and was for many years the chairman of the Yorkshire branch of the Society of Chemical Industry.
Education
Kenneth George Denbigh attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School. He studied chemistry at Leeds University, where he graduated with first-class honors in 1932, and in 1934 completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Kenneth George Denbigh's early career began at Imperial Chemical Industries in Billingham, England, where he was a chemist from 1934 until 1948. It was while there that he became interested in concepts of time in managing chemical engineering problems, and this, in turn, led to a fascination with thermodynamics. He joined the faculty at Cambridge University as a lecturer in 1948, followed by a professorship at the University of Edinburgh from 1955 to 1960.
Denbigh moved to the University of London, where he was a professor of chemical engineering at the Imperial College of Science and Technology for six years and the principal of Queen Elizabeth College from 1966 until his 1977 retirement. Denbigh wrote many textbooks and monographs. The first was The Thermodynamics of the Steady State (1951). In this monograph, Denbigh investigated steady state near-equilibrium processes in systems for which the state functions have the real physical sense. This was followed by his most famous 1955 The Principles of Chemical Equilibrium, a more conventional exposition of thermodynamics for students, going through four later editions, and many translations. He followed this up with the excellent 1956 textbook Chemical Reactor Theory.
In An Inventive Universe (1975) he argued that the personal sense of time was as valid a measure of its sense, from past to future, as any provided by the physical sciences. In 1981, he returned to this field in the monograph Three Concepts of Time (1981). These were focused on the usually reversible time of physics, the irreversible times of thermodynamics, and of mental time of human consciousness. His fellow workers in the field of thermodynamics are most appreciative of his last book, written in collaboration with his son, Jonathan, Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge (1985).
Achievements
Kenneth George Denbigh is best remembered as one of the creators of near-equilibrium thermodynamics, also for his applications in physical chemistry, and as a noted scientific investigator in problems of the metaphysics of time. His works received high praise from fellow colleagues.
As a theorist, Kenneth George Denbigh explored such difficult problems as the subjective versus objective nature of time and entropy, but another concern of his was the environmental and social implications and consequences of the industrial revolution.
Membership
Kenneth George Denbigh was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He had been a member of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science since its foundation in 1950.
Royal Society of London
,
United Kingdom
1965
Connections
In 1935 Kenneth George Denbigh married Kathleen Beatrice Enoch, the daughter of an engineer of Scottish descent who had been in charge of a munitions factory in 1914. They had two sons: Jonathan, who is a physicist and mathematician, and Philip, a Reader in Electronic Engineering at the University of Sussex.
