After serving in the US Army in WWII and working briefly in industrial research and development, Lambert joined the faculty of Occidental College, teaching from 1948 to 1981.
[3][4][5] Additionally, his research in the synthesis and polarography of organic halogen compounds was designed for undergraduate collaboration and all but one of his articles were published with student co-authors.
[16] Most notably, his work has influenced the way in which entropy (a concept defined mathematically in the technical literature) is presented in introductory textbooks and in popular science writing.
[17] Margulis and Eduard Punset have suggested that "The work of Frank Lambert, integrated into virtually all recent chemistry textbooks, makes clear that the second law is really a matter of energy dispersal.
The 2005 2nd Edition of "Chemistry: The Molecular Science" by Moore et al., on p. xiv states "Revised Chapters 14 and 18 to more clearly present entropy as dispersal of energy (See Lambert F. L. J. Chem.
"[20] The 2006 4th edition of "Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change" by Silberberg on p. xviii states "Chapter 20 has been completely rewritten to reflect a new approach to the coverage of entropy.
"[22] His ideas were independently put forward in the context of physics, rather than chemistry, by Harvey Leff, who also treated entropy as a measure of the spreading of energy.