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In thermodynamics, statistical thermodynamics is the study of the microscopic behaviors of thermodynamic systems using probability theory. Statistical thermodynamics, generally, provides a molecular level interpretation of thermodynamic quantities such as work, heat, free energy, and entropy. Statistical thermodynamics was born in 1870 with the work of Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, much of which was collectively published in Boltzmann's 1896 Lectures on Gas Theory. Boltzmann's original papers on the statistical interpretation of thermodynamics, the H-theorem, transport theory, thermal equilibrium, the equation of state of gases, and similar subjects, occupy about 2,000 pages in the proceedings of the Vienna Academy and other societies. The term "statistical thermodynamics" was proposed for use by the American thermodynamicist Willard Gibbs in 1902. According to Gibbs, the term "statistical", in the context of mechanics, i.e. statistical mechanics, was first used by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1871.