Principles of Thermodynamics

Jean-Philippe Ansermet is a Professor of Physics at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Fellow of the American Physical Society and past President of the Swiss Physical Society. He coordinated the teaching of physics at EPFL for twelve years. His course on mechanics, taught for twenty-five years, was based on his texbook and a MOOC that has generated over a half million views. For more than fifteen years, he has taught thermodynamics to engineering and physics students. An expert in spintronics, he applies thermodynamics to analyse his pioneering experiments on giant magneto-resistance or heat-driven spin torques, and to predict novel effects. Sylvain D. Brechet completed his Ph.D. studies in theoretical cosmology at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge as an Isaac Newton fellow. He is University lecturer at the Institute of Physics at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is teaching mechanics, thermodynamics and electromagnetism to first year students. His current research focuses on theoretical modelling in condensed matter physics and more particularly in spintronics. Merging the fields of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, continuum mechanics and electromagnetism, he brought new insight to spintronics and fluid mechanics. In particular, he predicted in 2013 the existence of a fundamental irreversible thermodynamic effect now known as the Magnetic Seebeck effect.