The universal gas constant R

摘要

Why is the universal gas constant in PV = nRT represented by the letter R? This is best answered by tracing the origins of the ideal gas law itself. One of the first persons to combine Boyle's law (1662) relating volume and pressure and Gay-Lussac's law (1802) relating volume and temperature in a single equation appears to have been the French engineer, Benoit-Pierre-Emile Clapeyron (1799-1864).