On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Japanese Conference on Calorimetry and Thermal Analysis(JCCTA), the annual meeting of the Japan Society of Calorimetry and Thermal Analysis, personal perspective towardthe fruitful future of thermodynamic study of materials is presented, while targeting young people working in the field.After a brief review on the principal nature and recent progress of basic thermodynamics, the present status ofexperimental thermodynamics is discussed. The latter half of the manuscript is devoted to the introduction of author’sown works, detecting motional correlation in crystals through entropy and seeking the basic structure of layered liquidcrystals based on the knowledge of molecular dynamics, which he believe to contain, as examples, some componentsvaluable for fruitful future of thermal study of materials.
Keywords:calorimetry, entropy, Boltzmann’s principle, experimental thermodynamics