Max Planck Biography
Uploaded by udayisgreat on Nov 01, 2007
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (April 23, 1858 in Kiel, Germany – October 4, 1947 in Göttingen, Germany) was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and therefore one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.
Contents [hide]
1 Life and work
1.1 Education
1.2 Academic career
1.3 Family
1.4 Professor at Berlin University
1.5 Black-body radiation
1.6 Einstein and the theory of relativity
1.7 World War and Weimar Republic
1.8 Quantum mechanics
1.9 Nazi dictatorship and Second World War
2 Religious view
3 Honours and medals
4 See also
5 Notes
6 Publications
7 Bibliography
8 External links
8.1 Biographies
8.2 Articles
[edit] Life and work
Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen, his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich, and his paternal uncle was a judge.
Planck was born in Kiel to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was the sixth child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Danish-Prussian war 1864. In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann Müller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 16. This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.
[edit] Education
Planck was extremely gifted when it came to music: he took singing lessons and played the piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.
Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised him against going into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes." Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but soon transferred to theoretical physics.
In 1877 he went...