Max Planck

Max Planck, German theoretical physicist most famous for originating quantum theory. Claimed by Daniel Kurniawan

Personal Life

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858 to Julius Wilhelm and Emma Planck. Planck was brought up in a large family - he was the sixth child - that valued scholarship, honesty, fairness, and generosity. His family greatly respected the church and state, displaying the importance of these values within the family. He began elementary school in Kiel, and although he was not the top student, he always came somewhere between third and eighth in the class. His best subject, as surprising as it sounds, was music, as he possessed the gift of perfect pitch and was an excellent pianist. He was also awarded the prize in catechism and good conduct almost every year.

When Planck was nine years old, his father, who was a distinguished jurist and professor of law at the University of Kiel, received an appointment at the University of Munich, where a teacher by the name of Hermann Müller stimulated Planck's interest in physics. After graduating at the age of 17, Planck ultimately chose physics as his career path because he had become deeply impressed by the absolute nature of the law of conservation of energy. 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.”

University Education and Career

Planck entered the University of Munich in the fall of 1874, however found very little encouragement to pursue a future in physics. He spent a year at the University of Berlin, where he had the opportunity to be taught by great research scientists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Robert Kirchoff, however he was very unimpressed by their lectures. He returned to Munich and received his doctorate of philosophy in July 1879 at the age of 21. The following year he finished his dissertation at Munich and became a lecturer. He spent five years teaching at the University of Munich, then was appointed Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Kiel, with the help of his father. Three years later, in 1889, he succeeded Kirchoff and became a professor at the University of Berlin, where he came to venerate Helmholtz as a mentor and colleague. Though he had only nine doctoral students altogether, his lectures on all branches of theoretical physics went through many editions and exerted great influence in that particular field. He remained a professor in Berlin until his retirement in 1926.

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References

http://www.famousscientists.org/max-planck/

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1918/planck-bio.html