Temperature > 19 - Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (Kiel, April 23, 1858 - Göttingen, October 4, 1947) was a German physicist. He is considered the father of quantum physics and one of the most important physicists of the 20th century. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for his contributions to quantum physics.

Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Not surprisingly, his first works were on thermodynamics. He also published works on entropy, thermoelectricity and the theory of dilute solutions. An excellent student, Planck obtained his doctorate at just 21 years of age.

Planck had a talent for 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.

In October 1878, Planck passed his qualifying examinations and in February 1879 defended his dissertation, Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie (On the second fundamental theorem of the mechanical theory of heat). For a short time he taught mathematics and physics at his old school in Munich. In June 1880, he submitted his habilitation thesis, Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures). He then became a professor in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work in the field of heat theory and subsequently discovered the thermodynamic formalism without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy played a central role in his work. In 1899, after researching electromagnetic radiation, he discovered a new fundamental constant, later named in his honor as Planck's Constant, which is used, for example, to calculate the energy of a photon. A year later, he discovered the Law of Thermal Radiation, called Planck's Law of Radiation. This was the basis of quantum theory, which emerged ten years later with the collaboration of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. From 1905 to 1909, Planck served as chief director of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Physical Society).