GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
The remit of the Thermodynamics Conference Series (TCS) is the promotion of thermodynamics as a scientific discipline, to improve its techniques, and to advance their application in science and technology through the organisation of biennial conferences, bringing together researchers from academia and industry from all over the world. Thermodynamics is a cornerstone of the scientific and engineering disciplines encompassing core branches of chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, energy technologies, and materials science. The thermodynamic interrelationships between heat, work, and energy are the basis for understanding the properties of matter and its transformations, which are at the heart of the design and optimisation of industrial processes, and the development of advanced materials and products. Thermodynamics provides a platform from which scientists and engineers can analyze and describe complex systems from the microscopic (molecular) level to the macroscopic scale of bulk matter. Although its origins date back to the scientific revolution, thermodynamics has continued to evolve, benefitting from advances in experimental techniques, theoretical formalism, and numerical molecular simulation. As a consequence of some of the more recent developments, the discipline is becoming relevant to an increasing number of domains including the complex supramolecular arrangements ubiquitous in the life sciences, nano-materials, and colloidal systems, in which short-range interactions can be dominant, and complex fluids such as liquid crystals, polyelectrolytes, and ionic liquids, which have been the subject of much current attention.
The Thermodynamics 2022 Conference was the 27th meeting in this series of biennial thermodynamics conferences conceived in the 1960s by Sir John Rowlinson and Max McGlashan, and initiated in Keele by Harold Springall (Spring as he was affectionately known by his friends, including Linus Pauling). Although the original emphasis of the science presented at the meetings was on experimental thermodynamics, the TCS now has a wide remit encompassing broad areas of the discipline including experiment, theory, and molecular simulation. The meetings were traditionally held in the UK (see Table ) until 2005 when the conference was hosted by Eduardo Filipe and José Nuno Canongia Lopes in Sesimbra, a picturesque fishing village 40 km from Lisbon. In view of the great success of the Portuguese conference it was decided to hold TCS meetings in both the UK and continental Europe from then on. In 2022, the conference was held for the first time at the University of Bath, on the Claverton Down hilltop edge of Bath, a city in the English county of Somerset known for and named after its Roman-built baths. A photograph of the participants of the Thermodynamics 2022 Conference is shown in Figure .
Table 1. Thermodynamics Conference Series (TCS); the Presiding Officer of the TCS Steering Committee is indicated in parentheses.
Figure 1. Thermodynamics 2022 Conference Participants gathered at The Chancellors’ Building foyer of the University of Bath.
After the faithful, selfless, and single-handed stewardship of Christopher Wormald in the 1990s, the TCS began its close association with the Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics Group (SMTG) of the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). As an independent organisation, the TCS is managed by a permanent Steering Committee, at present comprising the Treasurer of the TCS (who acts as the Presiding Officer of the Committee), the Chair of the SMTG Management Committee, an additional member of the SMTG, a UK-based member, the acting Thermodynamics Conference Chair, the Immediate Past Thermodynamics Conference Chair, and members of the International Scientific and the Local Organizing Committees. The constitution of the TCS Steering Committee for the Thermodynamics 2022 Conference and the forthcoming Thermodynamics 2024 Conference, which is to be held in the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), is shown in Table .
Table 2. Membership of the TCS Steering Committee.
Three prizes are currently awarded at the TCS: the Lennard-Jones Lectureship and Prize in recognition of outstanding and enduring contributions to the field (see Table ); the Guggenheim Medal for Excellence in Thermodynamics, awarded by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE, see Table ); and the Christopher Wormald Prize, awarded to the most meritorious postgraduate research at the TCS as nominated by members of the community (see Table ). The Lennard-Jones Lectureship and Prize has a long and illustrious history; it was originally awarded in alternate years by the Theoretical Chemistry Group (TCG) and the SMTG of the RSC, then biennially by the SMTG alone; since 2001 it has been presented at the TCS. Nominations for the Lennard-Jones Prize are made by the SMTG Management Committee to the TCS during the organisation of the programme for the Thermodynamics Conference, at which the recipient of the prize gives a keynote presentation. The 2022 Lennard-Jones Lectureship and Prize was awarded to Julia Yeomans (see Figure ), the 2022 Guggenheim Medal was awarded to Carolyn A. Koh (see Figure ), and the 2022 Wormald Prize was awarded to Fabian L. Thiemann (see Figure ). A keynote Molecular Physics Lecture sponsored by the publishers (Taylor & Francis Group) is also one of the crowning features of the TCS (see Table for past lecturers); Alejandro Gil-Villegas was the Molecular Physics Lecturer at the Thermodynamics 2022 Conference (see Figure ).
Figure 2. Recipient of the 2022 Lennard-Jones Lectureship and Prize: Julia Yeomans (centre), Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, UK (presented by Nigel Wilding (right) and Martin Trusler (left), representing the SMTG of the RSC).
Figure 3. Recipient of the 2022 Guggenheim Medal for Excellence in Thermodynamics: Carolyn A. Koh (left), Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, USA (presented by Alberto Striolo (right), Chair of the IChemE Guggenheim Medal Panel).
Figure 4. Recipient of the 2022 Christopher Wormald Prize for most meritorious postgraduate research: Fabian L. Thiemann (left), Imperial College London, UK (presented by Tim Mays (right) representing the TCS).
Figure 5. Molecular Physics Lecturer 2022: Alejandro Gil-Villegas (centre), Professor of Physics at the University of León, Guanajuato, Mexico (presented by Nigel Balmforth (left), Portfolio Manager, Taylor & Francis Group, and George Jackson (right), Editor and Chair of Molecular Physics).
Table 3. Lennard-Jones Lectureship and Prize.
Table 4. Guggenheim Medal for Excellence in Thermodynamics.
Table 5. Christopher Wormald Prize for most meritorious postgraduate research.
Table 6. The Molecular Physics Lectures.
After having been delayed for a year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Thermodynamics 2022 Conference was enthusiastically held at the University of Bath between the 7th and 9th of September 2022, and was attended by about 140 academic and industrial participants from 30 countries. The 154 scientific contributions presented at the meeting included the following broad themes: statistical mechanics and equations of state; novel experimental methods; molecular modelling and simulation; multi-scale modelling from quantum mechanics to engineering approaches; transport properties of complex fluids; interfacial phenomena; polymers and other materials; ionic liquids and green processes including supercritical fluids; aqueous systems and electrolytes; pharmaceuticals; nanoscale processes; carbon dioxide capture, and energy production. The conference coincided with the death of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the 8th of September 2022, leading to quiet reflection and tributes during a subdued conference dinner.
The format of the conference consisted of invited plenary lectures, oral presentations, and posters. The highlights of the Thermodynamics 2022 Conference included: the Lennard-Jones Lecture by Julia Yeomans entitled ‘Active matter: a new approach to mechanobiology?’ (awarded by the SMTG and sponsored by Unilever); the Molecular Physics Lecture presented by Alejandro Gil-Villegas entitled ‘Quantum molecular thermodynamics’ (sponsored by the Taylor & Francis Group); the Guggenheim Medal Lecture by Carolyn A. Koh entitled ‘Gas hydrates in energy and carbon capture applications’ (awarded and sponsored by the IChemE); and the presentation by Fabian L. Thiemann, the recipient of the Christopher Wormald Prize, entitled ‘Properties of low-dimensional materials explored with machine learning potentials’ (awarded by the TCS).
The members of the TCS Steering Committee are very grateful to the editors of Molecular Physics for supporting the publication of this special issue of the journal dedicated to the Thermodynamics 2022 Conference in Bath. We thank the publishers (Taylor & Francis Group) for sponsoring the event, as they have done since the 2007 conference. Contributions from participants are published following review and editing to the usual high standard of the journal, as was done for the Thermodynamics 2011 Conference in Athens [Citation1], the Thermodynamics 2013 Conference in Manchester [Citation2], the Thermodynamics 2015 Conference in Copenhagen [Citation3], the Thermodynamics 2017 Conference in Edinburgh [Citation4], and the Thermodynamics 2019 Conference in Huelva [Citation5]. The novel and exciting research presented at the conference will be abundantly apparent from the papers collected here.
On behalf of the TCS we warmly invite you to the Thermodynamics 2024 Conference at the University of Delft, 4–6 September 2024, chaired by Otto Moultos and Thijs J. H. Vlugt (see https://thermodynamics2024.org/ and contact [email protected] for further details).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
References
- G. Jackson and I.G. Economou. Mol. Phys. 110 (11–12), 1053–1056 (2012). doi:10.1080/00268976.2012.691683
- A. Galindo and A.J. Masters. Mol. Phys. 112 (17), 2199–2371 (2014). doi:10.1080/00268976.2014.950079
- I. Economou and G. Kontogeorgis. Mol. Phys. 114 (18), 2569–2249 (2016). doi:10.1080/00268976.2016.1238650
- L. Sarkisov, M.B. Sweatman, and G. Jackson. Mol. Phys. 116 (15–16), 1909–2142 (2018). doi:10.1080/00268976.2018.1485540
- F.J. Blas, A. Galindo, and G. Jackson. Mol. Phys. 118 (9–10), e1771043 (2020). doi:10.1080/00268976.2020.1771043