Journal Club Theme of October 2007: Irreversible thermodynamics of continuous media
The second half of the last century saw exciting developments in formulating mathematically rigorous yet physically well founded theories for irreversible thermodynamics in a continuum mechanics framework. The development took place within communities with widely different scientific backgrounds and motivations. In general, two divergent schools existed (and possibly exit): one of them having its roots in the works of I. Prigogine and S. R. de Groot, and the other initiated by C. Truesdell, B. D. Coleman and W. Noll.