@ARTICLE{10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1294, 

TITLE={Heat Conduction: Historical aspects}, 
  
AUTHOR={André Bontemps, }, 
	
JOURNAL={Entropy: Thermodynamics – Energy – Environment – Economy }, 
	
VOLUME={6}, 

NUMBER={Issue 1}, 
	
YEAR={2025}, 

URL={https://www.openscience.fr/Heat-Conduction-Historical-aspects}, 
	
DOI={10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1294}, 
	
ISSN={2634-1476}, 
	
ABSTRACT={In this article, after reminding the present definition of the term « heat », its evolution is summarized with focusing on the mode of heat conduction. The notion of heat has been discussed from antiquity either in East or West. First based on a sensation of hot or cold, the notion of heat for a long time has been confused with that of temperature. Two types of theories have been simultaneously developed, substantialist theories and mechanistic theories. The progression of these two types of theories has been reported from antiquity to present times. At the beginning was the Aristotelian categorization, then the phlogiston theory and, after the theories of caloric and ether for which heat is a substance but, it is shown that as soon as antic times the motion of matter corpuscles also has been associated to heat. Nevertheless, many researchers at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of 19th did not want to take sides, as did Fourier, who has formalized heat conduction in his pioneering work and who is the reference. The corpuscular interpretation is by now accepted and has followed the physics evolution especially with the quantum mechanics. So, heat conduction is associated with particle interactions and with atomic vibrations in solids. In this context, the use of the phonon quasi-particle has contributed to a large part to the present developments.}}