In chemistry, physics, and mathematics, the Boltzmann distribution (also called the Gibbs Distribution) is a certain distribution function or probability measure for the distribution of the states of a system. The distribution was discovered in the context of classical statistical mechanics by J.W. Gibbs in 1901. It underpins the concept of the canonical ensemble, providing the underlying distribution. A special case of the Boltzmann distribution, used for describing the velocities of particles of a gas, is the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. In more general mathematical settings, the Boltzmann distribution is also known as the Gibbs measure. In statistics and machine learning it is called a log-linear model.
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