Pierre Duhem (10.06.1861 —14.09.1916) was a French theoretical physicist and a historian and philosopher of science, and a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1913). He was born in Paris. He graduated from the École Normale (1884). In 1887-93 he worked in Lille, and from 1894 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Bordeaux.
His work was in the field of thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, the theory of elasticity, magnetism, and the history and philosophy of natural science. He introduced the concepts of thermodynamic potentials (1886) and of the rate of entropy production (1911). He denied atomic theory. He is a major historian of natural science. He exaggerated the role of science in the Middle Ages and played down the reactionary role of the church and of theology in the development of medieval science. On a number of questions he slid towards subjectivism in the spirit of E. Mach and H. Poincaré, and at times towards agnosticism.