Max Planck (1858-1947)

Happy Birthday Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

He was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858, the son of Julius Wilhelm and Emma née Patzig Planck. His father was Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Kiel, and later in Göttingen.Planck studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, where his teachers included Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and received his doctorate of philosophy at Munich in 1879. He was Privatdozent in Munich from 1880 to 1885, then Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at Kiel until 1889, in which year he succeeded Kirchhoff as Professor at Berlin University, where he remained until his retirement in 1926. Afterwards he became President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science, a post he held until 1937. The Prussian Academy of Sciences appointed him a member in 1894 and Permanent Secretary in 1912.  (extracted from  Max Planck – Biography.)

Planck is said to be the fore father of quantum physics. He was first scientist to notice that in application of principles of physics to the quanta level there was some deviation. To put it simply, as Newton had explained that if an object falls from a height, its speed will be determined by its mass or weight, among other things like friction.  It has now been noticed that at quanta level (quanta is smallest possible particle of any matter) the matter does not behave in the same manner and that the temperature has an effect on this behavior. Planck was the first to notice the effect of temperature of black-body upon the energy in its radiation. That was time when even atom was not discovered what to speak of quanta. More detailed introduction to quantum Physics can be reached here.  By the way Quantum Physics has evolved much more but has yet to make sense of all the experiments so as to make it a coherent science.