Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Early Life
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Born: 23 April 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Sixth child in an academic family, his father Julius Wilhelm
Planck being Professor of Constitutional Law in the University
of Kiel
Went to Secondary School at the famous Maximilian
Gymnasium in May 1867, which shaped interest in physics and
mathematics
Received his doctorate from Munich in July 1879 at the age of
21 with a thesis on the second law of thermodynamics
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After the death of Kirchoff, the University of Berlin looked for
a new colleague for Helmholtz. They approached Ludwig
Boltzmann but he was not interested, and the same proved
true for Heinrich Hertz. In 1888 the appointment of Planck
was strongly recommended by Helmholtz:
Planck's papers are very favourably distinguished from those
of the majority of his colleagues in that he tries to carry
through the strict consequences of thermomechanics
constructively, without adding additional hypotheses, and
carefully separates the secure from the doubtful.
The Key to the Blackbody Spectrum
E = hv
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Planck announced his derivation of blackbody spectrum in
1900, which was based on the revolutionary idea that the
energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete
values or quanta.
One year later Planck described his insight in introducing the
energy quantum saying:
... the whole procedure was an act of despair because a
theoretical interpretation had to be found at any price, no
matter how high that might be.
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That price turned out to be the abandonment of classical
mechanics.
Planck received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1918 for his
quantum theory after it had been successfully applied to the
photoelectric effect by Einstein and the atom by Niels Bohr.
Later Life: Frought with Tragedy
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After his major discovery, he had little role in the development
of quantum mechanics.
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His first wife died in 1909.
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His eldest son, Karl was killed in battle in 1916 (WWI).
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In 1917 one daughter, Margarete died at birth.
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In 1919 his other daughter, Emma, also died at birth.
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In 1944 his house in Berlin was destroyed in an air raid,
burning his irreplaceable scientific notebooks.
In 1945 his son Erwin, who had been implicated in the plot on
Hitler's life in 1944, was tortured to death by the Gestapo.
At end of the war, Planck made great efforts to reconstruct
German science at age 87.
Died: 4 Oct 1947 in Göttingen, Germany.
Other Interesting Facts
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He was friends with Emil du Bois-Reymond (the famous
physiologist), Helmholtz, Pringsheim, and Wein.
Planck was considered to be a man of such high personal
integrity and wisdom that he was once allowed to speak
directly with Adolph Hitler and convey his opinions against
Germany's racial policies.
He was the first to write down the equation usually attributed
to Boltzmann (S = k lnW). The constant k was first used by
Planck in 1900. Lorentz and others called k Planck's constant
until 1911, when the term Boltzmann’s constant became
generally accepted.
Quotes
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If anybody says he can think about quantum problems
without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood
the first thing about them.
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by
gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely
happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its
opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation
is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning.
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At that time I held what would be considered today naively charming and
agreeable expectations, that the laws of classical electrodynamics would, if
approached in a sufficiently general manner avoiding special hypotheses,
allow us to understand the most significant part of the process we would
expect, and so to achieve the desired aim. ...
Because [a constant in the radiation law] represents the product of energy
and time ... I described it as the elementary quantum of action. ... As long as
it was looked on as infinitely small ... everything was fine; but in the general
case, however, a gap opened wide somewhere or other, which became more
striking the weaker and faster the vibrations considered. That all efforts to
bridge the chasm foundered soon left little doubt. Either the quantum of
action was a fictional quantity, then the whole deduction of the radiation law
was essentially an illusion representing only an empty play on formulas of no
significance, or the derivation of the radiation law was based on a sound
physical conception. In this case the quantum of action must play a
fundamental role in physics, and here was something completely new, never
heard of before, which seemed to require us to basically revise all our
physical thinking, built as this was, from the time of the establishment of the
infinitesimal calculus by Leibniz and Newton, on accepting the continuity of all
causative connections. Experiment decided it was the second alternative.
References
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http://www-groups.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Planck.html
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http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1918/planck-bio.html
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http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Planck.html
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http://wwwchem.csustan.edu/chem3070/Raul1.htm
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http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/maxplanck.html