Professor Wertheim is one of the world's leading authorities on the thermodynamic and dielectric properties of fluids.
Liquids are more ordered than gases, but less ordered than solids.
They lack an ideal reference state, such as the ideal gas for gases and the perfect crystal for solids. Liquids are of many different types, with quite different behavior, dependent on the forces between the basic units that may be atoms, molecules, ions, or even monomeric units in polymerizing systems. The aim of the theory of liquids is the calculation of the properties of liquids from the forces between the basic units. Our work has been concerned with the equilibrium thermodynamic and dielectric properties, and the structure at the level of pair correlations between the basic units. There is no magic universal formula.