Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Born:
23 April 1858 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Died:
4 Oct 1947 in Göttingen, Germany
Max Planck came from an academic family, his father being professor
of law at Kiel and both his grandfather and great-grandfather had been professors
of theology at Göttingen. In 1867 Planck's family moved to Munich and he attended
school there. He did well at school, but not brilliantly, usually coming somewhere
between third and eighth in his class.
In 1874, at the age of 16, he entered
the University of Munich. Before he began his studies he discussed the prospects
of research in physics with Philipp von Jolly, the professor of physics there,
and was told that physics was essentially a complete science with little prospect
of further developments. Fortunately Planck decided to study physics despite the
bleak future for research that was presented to him.
In [7] Planck describes
why he chose physics:-
The outside world is something independent
from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute
appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.
Planck
then studied at Berlin where his teachers included Helmholtz and Kirchhoff. He
later wrote that he admired Kirchhoff greatly but found him dry and monotonous
as a teacher. Planck returned to Munich and received his doctorate at the age
of 21 with a thesis on the second law of thermodynamics. He was then appointed
to a teaching post at the University of Munich in 1880 and he taught there until
1885.
In 1885 Planck was appointed to a chair in Kiel and held this chair for
four years. After the death of Kirchhoff in 1887, Planck succeeded him in the
chair of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin in 1889. He was to hold
the Berlin chair for 38 years until he retired in 1927.
While in Berlin Planck
did his most brilliant work and delivered outstanding lectures. He studied thermodynamics
in particular examining the distribution of energy according to wavelength. By
combining the formulas of Wien and Rayleigh, Planck announced in 1900 a formula
now known as Planck's radiation formula. In a letter written a year later Planck
described proposing the formula 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.
Within two months
Planck made a complete theoretical deduction of his formula renouncing classical
physics and introducing the quanta of energy. At first the theory met resistance
but due to the successful work of Niels Bohr in 1913, calculating positions of
spectral lines using the theory, it became generally accepted. Planck himself
in [7] explains how despite having invented
quantum theory he did not
understand it himself at first:-
I tried immediately to weld the
elementary quantum of action somehow in the framework of classical theory. But
in the face of all such attempts this constant showed itself to be obdurate ...
My futile attempts to put the elementary quantum of action into the classical
theory continued for a number of years and they cost me a great deal of effort.
Planck received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.
Planck took
little part in the further development of quantum theory, this being left to Paul
Dirac and others. Planck took on administrative duties such as Secretary of the
Mathematics and Natural Science Section of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, a
post he held from 1912 until 1943. He had been elected to the Academy in 1894.
Planck was president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, the main German research
organisation, from 1930 until 1937. He remained in Germany during World War II
through what must have been times of the deepest difficulty since his son Erwin
was executed for plotting to assassinate Hitler. In [4] Heilbron describes the
impact of wars on Planck and his family:-
He would remember, even
in his old age, the sight of Prussian and Austrian troops marching into his native
town when he was six years old. Throughout his life, war would cause him deep
personal sorrow. He lost his eldest son during World War I. In World War II, his
house in Berlin was burned down in an air raid. In 1945 his other son was
executed when declared guilty of complicity in a plot to kill Hitler.
After
World War II he again became president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft in 1945-1946
for the second time defending German science through another period of exceptional
difficulty.
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