General and Statistical Thermodynamics

This textbook provides comprehensive information on general and statistical thermodynamics. It begins with an introductory statistical mechanics course, deriving all the important formulae meticulously and explicitly, without mathematical shortcuts. In turn, the main part of the book focuses on in-depth discussions of the concepts and laws of thermodynamics, van der Waals, Kelvin and Claudius theories, ideal and real gases, thermodynamic potentials, phonons and all related aspects. To elucidate the concepts introduced and to provide practical problem-solving support, numerous carefully worked-out examples are included.

The text is clearly written and punctuated with a number of interesting anecdotes. The book also provides alternative solutions to problems and second equivalent explanations of important physical concepts. This second edition has been expanded to cover the foundations of superconductivity with new chapters on Cooper pairs, the Bogoliubov transformation, and superconductivity. It is suitable as a main thermodynamics textbook for upper-undergraduate students and provides extensive coverage, allowing instructors to ‘pick and choose’ the elements that best match their class profile. 

After attending Islamia College in Peshawar, Raza Tahir-Kheli read Physics at Oriel College, University of Oxford, in 1955 and completed his Ph.D. there in 1962. He served as a Research Associate-Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, from 1962 to 1964, prior to working at the Nuclear Science Laboratory in Islamabad for a two-year period. In 1966 be became an Assistant Professor of Physics at Temple University, where he subsequently served as an Associate Professor (1968-1970) and Professor (1970-2011).

Other short-term appointments include two sabbaticals at the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford; Royal Society Visiting Professor in 1982; Professeur de Echange, Centre Scientifique d'Orsay, France; Visiting Professor, Institute Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France; Part Sabbatical at Max-Planck Institut für Physik and at the Department of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Raza Tahir-Kheli was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007. Currently, he serves as a Professor Emeritus at Temple University.