Quantum mechanics max planck biography
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This question had been explored experimentally, but the Rayleigh-Jeans law, derived from classical physics, failed to explain the observed behavior at high frequencies, where it predicted a divergence of the energy density toward infinity (the "ultraviolet catastrophe"). Even Einstein had rejected Bohr's interpretation.
But already in 1915, Planck revoked parts of the Manifesto, (after several meetings with Dutch physicist Lorentz), and in 1916, he signed a declaration against the German policy of annexation. He spent five years teaching at the University of Munich, then was appointed Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Kiel, with the help of his father.
Planck was interested in truth and the Universe beyond observation, and he objected to atheism as an obsession with symbols.[1]
Legacy
Planck was the very first scientist to contradict the physics established by Newton. Consequently, Erwin died a horrible death at the hands of the Gestapo in 1945.
By December 14, 1900, Planck was already able to present a theoretical derivation of the law, but this required him to use ideas from statistical mechanics, as introduced by Boltzmann.
His convictions were based on seeking that higher truth, not on doctrine, and he was aware that science itself had just started on the quest. He also loved the outdoors, taking long walks each day and hiking and climbing in the mountains on vacations, even in advanced old age.
Planck entered the University of Munich in the fall of 1874 but found little encouragement there from physics professor Philipp von Jolly.
He presented his theoretical explanation involving this quanta of energy on December 14, 1900 at a meeting of the Physikalische Gesellschaft in Berlin. But Planck excelled in all subjects, and after graduation at age 17 he faced a difficult career decision. The second law became the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Munich, and it lay at the core of the researches that led him to discover the quantum of action, now known as Planck's constant h, in 1900.
In 1859-60 Kirchhoff had defined a blackbody as an object that re-emits all of the radiant energy incident upon it; i.e., it is a perfect emitter and absorber of radiation.
Max Planck | |
|---|---|
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck | |
| Born | April 23, 1858 |
| Died | October 4, 1947 Göttingen, Germany |
| Residence | Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Field | Physicist |
| Institutions | University of Kiel Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft |
| Alma mater | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München |
| Academic advisor | Philipp von Jolly |
| Notable students | Gustav Ludwig Hertz Erich Kretschmann |
| Known for | Planck's constant, quantum theory |
| Notable prizes | Nobel Prize in Physics (1918) |
| He was the father of Erwin Planck. | |
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) was a German physicist who is widely regarded as one of the most significant scientists in history.
He continued to travel frequently, giving numerous public lectures, including talks on Religion and Science (he was a devoted and persistent adherent of Christianity all his life). He also succeeded in secretly enabling a number of Jewish scientists to continue working in institutes of the KWG for several years. Returning to Munich, he received his doctoral degree in July 1879 (the year of Einstein's birth) at the unusually young age of 21.
Reality and Scientific Truth: Discussions with Einstein, von Laue, and Planck. Mathematically, this was expressed as:
where is a constant that came to be called Planck's constant (or Planck's action quantum), first introduced in 1899, and is the frequency of the radiation. As time went on physicists recognized ever more clearly that--because Planck's constant was not zero but had a small but finite value--the microphysical world, the world of atomic dimensions, could not in principle be described by ordinary classical mechanics.