Max Planck was a renowned physicist. Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on 23 April in Kiel Germany. His father was a prominent jurist and professor of law at a university of Kiel. At the age of 9,his father received a post at the university of Munich ,and Planck attended the Maximilian Gymnasium. While Planck succeeded very well in all subjects there,he gained an interest in physics and mathematics,finally graduating at the age of 17.
Planck based his doctoral dissertation on the second law of thermodynamics and in July 1879,at the young age of 21,he received his doctoral degree. Following this ,he completed his qualifying dissertation at Munich and was employed as a lecturer(Privatdozent).
Plank's Quantum Theory:
Planck was intrigued by the law discovered by his colleague Wilhelm Wien in 1896.
He made several attempts at deriving this law ,starting from the second law of thermodynamics as a base. Experimental evidence was coming light ,which showed that Wiens law broke down completely at low frequencies but was perfectly viable at high frequencies.
The formula by Planck was hailed a great success,but he noted that it was just a formula;a lucky guess which still had to be derived from first principles in order to give it a proper scientific standing.
In 1900,at the age of 42,Planck achieved this,but in the process he had to abandon one of his greatest beliefs-that the second law of thermodynamics was an absolute law of nature.
In 1918,he received the Noble Prize for Physics for his work on introducing the quantum.Along side Einstein and Schrodinger,he sternly opposed the statistical view held by Bohr,born,Heisenberg and many others which were introduced to quantum mechanics in 1925-26.
Planck retired in 1928,with Erwin Schrodinger taking his place.
Planck suffered many personal tragedies,including losing two sons and daughters at an early age. One of his sons,Erwin,was killed by the Gestapo due to a failed bombing of Hitler in 1944. This incident left Planck without the will to live. He died on the 4th October,1947 aged 89.
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