Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
Article
by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson (University of St. Andrews, Scotland)
Gustav
Robert Kirchhoff
Born: 12 March 1824 in
Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia)
Died:
17 Oct 1887 in Berlin, Germany
Gustav Kirchhoff was a student of Gauss. He taught at Berlin (an unpaid
post) from 1847, then at Breslau. In 1854 he was appointed professor of physics
at Heidelberg where he collaborated with Bunsen.
He was a physicist who made
important contributions to the theory of circuits using topology and to elasticity. Kirchhoff's laws, announced
in 1854, allow calculation of currents, voltages and resistances of electrical
circuits extending the work of Ohm. His work on black body radiation was fundamental
in the development of quantum theory.
His work
on spectrum analysis led on to a study of the composition of light from the Sun.
Kirchhoff was the first to explain the dark lines in the Sun's spectrum as caused
by absorption of particular wavelengths as the light passes through a gas. This
started a new era in astronomy.
In 1875 he was appointed to the chair of mathematical
physics at Berlin. Disability meant he had to spend much of his life on crutches
or in a wheelchair. His best known work is the four volume masterpiece Vorlesungen
über mathematische Physik (1876-94).
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