On Monday 17 June, Katie Robertson spoke at the Sigma Club seminar at LSE, on the ‘holy grail’ of philosophy of thermal physics: how to reduce the second law of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics.

Katie’s conclusion is that once we get properly clear on the target of the reduction – on what grail it is we’re seeking! – then the Gibbs entropy of statistical mechanics can be shown to play the role of the thermodynamic entropy.