Photograph of the first Solvay Conference in 1911 at the Hotel Metropole. Seated (L–R): W. Nernst, M. Brillouin, E. Solvay, H. Lorentz, E. Warburg, J. Perrin, W. Wien, M. Curie, and H. Poincaré. Standing (L–R): R. Goldschmidt, M. Planck, H. Rubens, A. Sommerfeld, F. Lindemann, M. de Broglie, M. Knudsen, F. Hasenöhrl, G. Hostelet, E. Herzen, J. H. Jeans, E. Rutherford, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, A. Einstein and P. Langevin.
Gallery of Max Planck
1929
Berlin, Germany
Max Planck presents Albert Einstein with the Max-Planck medal of the German Physical Society, June 28, 1929, in Berlin.
Photograph of the first Solvay Conference in 1911 at the Hotel Metropole. Seated (L–R): W. Nernst, M. Brillouin, E. Solvay, H. Lorentz, E. Warburg, J. Perrin, W. Wien, M. Curie, and H. Poincaré. Standing (L–R): R. Goldschmidt, M. Planck, H. Rubens, A. Sommerfeld, F. Lindemann, M. de Broglie, M. Knudsen, F. Hasenöhrl, G. Hostelet, E. Herzen, J. H. Jeans, E. Rutherford, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, A. Einstein and P. Langevin.
(Written by the founder of quantum theory, a Nobel Prize w...)
Written by the founder of quantum theory, a Nobel Prize winner, this classic volume is still recognized as among the best introductions to thermodynamics. It is a model of conciseness and logic, ideally suited to the needs of both students and research workers in physics and chemistry. Based on Planck's original papers, the book offers a uniform point of view for the entire field. Rejecting the earlier approaches of Helmholtz and Maxwell, Planck makes no assumptions regarding the nature of heat but begins with only a few empirical facts from which he deduces new physical and chemical laws. He considers fundamental facts and definitions (temperature, molecular weight, quantity of heat), the first and second fundamental principles of thermodynamics (applications to homogeneous and non-homogeneous systems, proof, general deductions), and applications to special states of equilibrium (homogeneous systems, systems in various states of aggregation, system of any number of independent constituents, gaseous systems, dilute solutions, absolute value of the entropy, Nernst’s theorem).
Max Planck was a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918. He is best known as one of the founders of the quantum theory of physics.
Background
Max Planck was born on April 23, 1858, in Kiel, Germany. The son of Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck, a distinguished jurist and professor of law, and Emma Patzig, he inherited and sustained the family tradition of idealism, trustworthiness, conservatism, and devotion to church and state. Both Max's parents were relatively old when he was born, his father being 41 and his mother being 37. The family also included two children of Wilhelm von Planck by his first wife, Mathilde Voigt of Jena, who had died in Greifswald. Max Planck’s ancestors on his father’s side included clergymen and lawyers.
Education
In the spring of 1867, the family moved from Kiel, where Max had completed the first classes of elementary school, to Munich. There he entered the classical Königliche Maximilian-Gymnasium in May 1867. His mathematical talents emerged early, and thus he gratefully recalled his teacher Hermann Müller, who also taught him astronomy and mechanics. Müller’s explanation of the principle of conservation of energy made a strong impression on him, and this principle became one of the foundations of Max Planck’s later work.
After graduated from the Gymnasium in July 1874, Max faced a difficult career decision. He ultimately chose physics over classical philology or music because he had dispassionately reached the conclusion that it was in physics that his greatest originality lay. Music, nonetheless, remained an integral part of his life. He possessed the gift of absolute pitch and was an excellent pianist who daily found serenity and delight at the keyboard, enjoying especially the works of Schubert and Brahms. He also loved the outdoors, taking long walks each day and hiking and climbing in the mountains on vacations, even in advanced old age.
Planck entered the University of Munich in the fall of 1874 and initially decided to study mainly mathematics, influenced by the lectures of Gustav Bauer, who also taught the calculus of variations and probability theory, as well as other subjects. He was soon attracted to physics, although Philipp von Jolly tried to persuade him that nothing essentially new remained to be discovered in this branch of learning. He said: "In this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes." But Planck stood by his rejection of pure mathematics because of his deep interest in questions concerning the nature of the universe. Student notes show that he attended Gustav Bauer’s lectures on "Analytische Geometrie," Ludwig Seidel’s course on "Höhere Algebra," Jolly’s "Mechanische Wärmetheorie," and the physics lectures of Wilhelm Beetz. Such lectures were predominantly concerned with experimental physics, although lectures titled “Mathematical Physics" can be traced back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. In any case, this was the only time in Planck’s life when he carried out experiments (for example, on the osmosis of gases).
Because of illness, he had to interrupt his studies during the summer term of 1875. During a year spent at Humboldt University of Berlin (1877–78), he was unimpressed by the lectures of Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, despite their eminence as research scientists. His intellectual capacities were, however, brought to a focus as the result of his independent study, especially of Rudolf Clausius’s writings on thermodynamics. Returning to Munich, he received his doctoral degree in July 1879 (the year of Einstein’s birth) at the unusually young age of 21.
On 14 June 1880 Planck was given the venia legendi at the University of Munich for his paper Gleichge wichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen. In this paper he extended the mechanical theory of heat, using the entropy concept, to treat elastic forces acting on bodies at different temperatures. It may be noted, however, that his habilitation lecture in the same year was "Über die Prinzipien der mechanischen Gastheorie," in accord with the lectures given by his colleagues at Munich. Later, when he was at Kiel and Berlin, he enjoyed a stimulating correspondence on the current problems of thermodynamics with his friend Leo Graetz, then Privatdozent at Munich. At Munich he also made friends with Carl Runge, who in later years gave him valuable mathematical assistance.
An appointment as a professor extraordinarius at the University of Kiel on 2 May 1885 gave Planck greater scientific independence. Positions of this kind were then rather new in Germany and were restricted primarily to theoretical physics, which did not have a very high status compared to experimental physics.9 It seems that, as a result, Planck had relatively few students and so had correspondingly more time available for research in his new subject. Yet it is remarkable that in the winter semester of 1887–1888 he announced simultaneously four lecture courses: "Voträge und Übungen aus der Electricitätslehre," "Theoretische Optik," "Mechanische Wärmethorie," and "Besprechung wichtiger Literaturerscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der Wärmelehre." These topics, combined with the report of Hertz’s recently performed experiments on and simplification of Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, point toward Planck’s combination of these fields in his radiation theory in the 1890’s.
The appointment at Kiel also gave him some personal security, with an adequate annual salary (2,000 marks), so that he was able to marry his fiancée from Munich, Marie Merck, and establish a household.
In his publications during this period, Planck still concentrated, as he had done in Munich, on applications of his ideas to physical (or "general") chemistry. After completing his prize essay on Das princip der Erhaltung der Energie (1887), which included a ninety-one-page historical introduction, he turned again to the "second principle" and in three papers tried to generalize it to cover the theory of dilute solutions and thermoelectricity. These studies later culminated in his monograph Grundriss der allgemeinen Thermochemie (1893), which had a thirty-one-page historical introduction, and in his Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik (1897).
On the basis of these successful researches in thermodynamics (or Thermomechanik as it was then called), Planck was appointed on 29 November 1888 to be the successor of Kirchhoff, as an assistant professor at the University of Berlin and director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics (newly founded for him). He served as professor ordinarius in Berlin from 23 May 1892 to 1 October 1926. He quickly attained professional recognition; he was at once made a member of the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin and was elected to the Königlich-Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin on 11 June 1894.
Before 1900 he participated demonstrably in the meetings of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte, namely in 1891, 1898, and 1899, on which occasions he took the opportunity to engage in scientific exchanges with Boltzmann. His circle of colleagues included such men as Emil du Bois-Reymond, Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Pringsheim, Wilhelm Wien, Max B. Weinstein (who in 1883 had edited a translation of Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism), the physicist Carl A. Paalzow of the Technische Hochschule in Berlin Charlottenburg, August Kundt, Werner von Siemens, and also the theologian Adolph von Siemens, the historian Theodor Mommsen, and the Germanic philologist Wilhelm Scherer. He was, in particular, closely connected with the experimental physicists at the physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (founded in 1887) - Otto Lummer, W. Wien, Ludwig Holborn, Ferdinand Kurlbaum, and others. An enormous correspondence began to develop with scientists outside of Berlin - H. Hertz, Ernst Lecher, Leo Koenigsberger, A. Sommerfeld, P. Ehrenfest, Albert Schweitzer, and others.
As an admirer of Helmholtz it was appropriate for Planck to combine his physics with music, but in contrast to Helmholtz, tempered scale he preferred the natural scale and commissioned the construction of a harmonium with 104 tones in each octave. Such interests went hand in hand with private home concerts, in which the violinist Joseph Joachim and Maria Scherer participated.
In his scientific work at Berlin, Planck endeavored to give an independent character to "mathematical physics." An indication of this was the lecture "System der gesammten Physik," in which he followed an approach somewhat similar to that of Kirchhoff. Planck moreover was drawn into discussions on more general ideas of his time. This was a consequence of his striving for generalization. Thus, in 1895, he defended Clausius’ form of the second law of thermodynamics against the gross oversimplifications of the "new energetics" of G. Helm, W. Ostwald, and later E. Mach.
Planck always took on administrative duties, in addition to his research activities, such as Secretary of the Mathematics and Natural Science Section of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, a post he held from 1912 until 1943.
Planck had always been inclined toward generalization. Encouraged by finding himself in the spotlight of publicity, he now attacked even more general questions in some twenty published popular lectures (as well as in unpublished letters) devoted to "developing and explaining" his "scientific views." This pursuit of general ideas going back to the 1890’s really started with his lecture "Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes" given at Leiden in 1908 and continued in the following years with numerous reflections on the relations of science to philosophy, religion, and human nature.
Planck lived through two world wars, and his correspondence with Lorentz, Schweitzer, and others shows that he maintained an uncorrupted independent viewpoint and a positive attitude toward life. In 1944 almost all his manuscripts and books in Berlin were destroyed during an air raid. From 1943 to 1945 he lived in Rogätz, near Magdeburg, and then for the last two and a half years of his life he was in Göttingen, where he witnessed the founding of the Max Planck Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, a successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft founded in 1911. (He had been its president from 1930 to 1937).
The last years of Planck’s life were darkened by the complicated conditions of wartime and its aftermath as well by personal blows of fortune. In February 1944 his home in the Berlin suburb Grunewald was totally gutted in a fire after an air raid and he lost almost all his possessions, including his irreplaceable notebooks, diaries, correspondence and other papers. He was hit even harder by the arrest and murder of his son Erwin, who had been involved in the attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944. Erwin had become his father’s closest friend and most trusted advisor, particularly during the period of the Nazi dictatorship.
Planck remained a devout Christian throughout his life, often attempting to integrate his scientific and religious views. Like Einstein, he was never able to accept some of the fundamental concepts of modern physics that he had helped to create. For example, he clung to the notion of causality in physical phenomena, rejecting the principles of uncertainty proposed by Heisenberg and others. He maintained his belief in God, although his descriptions of the Deity were not anthropomorphic but more akin to natural law itself.
Politics
Due to his outspoken support of Jewish physicists like Einstein, Planck was labeled by the nationalist Aryan Physics faction of academics as being part of a grand Jewish conspiracy to keep German scientists from appointments in university physics departments Along with other physicists in Einstein’s circle, he was called a "bacteria carrier" and a "white Jew" in the official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, and his ancestry was investigated by the Gestapo.
He was one of many apolitical civil servants in German academia who hoped that the worst effects of anti-Semitic nationalism would eventually pass, and who wanted to maintain Germany’s importance on the world scientific stage as much as possible in the meantime. When Hitler began demanding that speeches open with "Heil Hitler," Planck begrudgingly complied. As physicist Paul Ewald described of his address at the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Metals in the 1930s, "… we were all staring at Planck, waiting to see what he would do at the opening, because at that time it was prescribed officially that you had to open such addresses with 'Heil Hitler.' Well, Planck stood on the rostrum and lifted his hand half high, and let it sink again. He did it a second time. Then finally the hand came up and he said 'Heil Hitler.' … Looking back, it was the only thing you could do if you didn’t want to jeopardize the whole [Kaiser Wilhelm Society]." As science writer Philip Ball describes, for Planck, the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany was a "catastrophe that had engulfed him, and which in the end destroyed him."
Today, Planck's constant is considered to be a fundamental constant of nature, much like the speed of light and the gravitational constant. Although Planck was himself a modest man, he recognized the significance of his discovery. Robert L. Weber in Pioneers of Science: Nobel Prize Winners in Physics writes that Planck remarked to his son Erwin during a walk shortly after the discovery of the quantum concept, "Today I have made a discovery which is as important as Newton's discovery." That boast has surely been confirmed. The science of physics today can be subdivided into two great eras, classical physics, involving concepts worked out before Planck's discovery of the quantum, and modern physics, ideas that have been developed since 1900, often as a result of that discovery. In recognition of this accomplishment, Planck was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in physics.
Views
In his autobiography, Planck described why he chose to pursue 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," he wrote.
The bulk of his systematic work may be divided into thermodynamics, radiation theory, relativity, and philosophy of science. Planck's earliest field of research involved thermodynamics, an area of physics dealing with heat energy. He was very much influenced by the work of Rudolf Clausius, whose work he studied by himself while in Berlin. He discussed and analyzed some of Clausius's concepts in his own doctoral dissertation. Between 1880 and 1892, Planck carried out a systematic study of thermodynamic principles, especially as they related to chemical phenomena such as osmotic pressure, boiling and freezing points of solutions, and the dissociation of gases. He brought together the papers published during this period in his first major book, Vorlesungen über Thermodynamik, published in 1897.
Once installed at Berlin, Planck turned his attention to an issue that had long interested his predecessor, the problem of black body radiation. A black body is defined as any object that absorbs all frequencies of radiation when heated and then gives off all frequencies as it cools. For more than a decade, physicists had been trying to find a mathematical law that would describe the way in which a black body radiates heat.
The problem was unusually challenging because black bodies do not give off heat in the way that scientists had predicted that they would. Among the many theories that had been proposed to explain this inconsistency was one by the German physicist Wilhelm Wien and one by the English physicist John Rayleigh. Wien's explanation worked reasonably well for high-frequency black body radiation, and Rayleigh's appeared to be satisfactory for low-frequency radiation. But no one theory was able to describe black body radiation across the whole spectrum of frequencies. Planck began working on the problem of black body radiation in 1896, and by 1900, had found a solution to the problem. That solution depended on a revolutionary assumption, namely that the energy radiated by a black body is carried away in discrete "packages" that were later given the name quanta (from the Latin, quantum, for "how much"). The concept was revolutionary because physicists had long believed that energy is always transmitted in some continuous form, such as a wave. The wave, like a line in geometry, was thought to be infinitely divisible.
Planck's suggestion was that the heat energy radiated by a black body be thought of as a stream of "energy bundles," the magnitude of which is a function of the wavelength of the radiation. His mathematical expression of that concept is relatively simple: E = h 6,50 − υ, where E is the energy of the quantum, υ is the wavelength of the radiation, and h 6,50 − is a constant of proportionality, now known as Planck's constant. Planck found that by making this assumption about the nature of radiated energy, he could accurately describe the experimentally observed relationship between wavelength and energy radiated from a black body. The problem had been solved.
After completing his study of black body radiation, Planck turned his attention to another new and important field of physics: relativity. Albert Einstein's famous paper on the theory of general relativity, published in 1905, stimulated Planck to look for ways on incorporating his quantum concept into the new concepts proposed by Einstein. He was somewhat successful, especially in extending Einstein's arguments from the field of electromagnetism to that of mechanics. Planck's work in this respect is somewhat ironic in that it had been Einstein who, in another 1905 paper, had made the first productive use of the quantum concept in his solution of the photoelectric problem.
Throughout his life, Planck was interested in general philosophical issues that extended beyond specific research questions. As early as 1891, he had written about the importance of finding large, general themes in physics that could be used to integrate specific phenomena. His book Philosophy of Physics, published in 1959, addressed some of these issues. He also looked beyond science itself to ask how his own discipline might relate to philosophy, religion, and society as a whole. Some of his thoughts on the correlation of science, art, and religion are presented in his 1935 book, Die Physik im Kampf um die Weltanschauung.
The study of the history of science, according to Planck, helps to identify patterns in the development of science, and, therefore, to predict the direction of its further development; it is an important tool for broadening the scientist's horizons. At the same time, the study of the evolution of science is inextricably linked with the study of the personalities of outstanding scientists.
In his Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, he stated Planck's Principle, which holds that "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." This view contradicts that forwarded by Karl Popper known as Popper's Principle.
Quotations:
"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."
"The laws of Physics have no consideration for the human senses; they depend on the facts, and not upon the obviousness of the facts."
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
"Truth never triumphs - its opponents just die out."
"Natural science wants man to learn, religion wants him to act."
"Both religion and science need for their activities the belief in God, and moreover God stands for the former in the beginning, and for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, God represents the basis, for the latter – the crown of any reasoning concerning the world-view."
Membership
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
German Physical Society
,
Germany
Royal Society of Edinburgh
,
United Kingdom
Max Planck Society
,
Germany
Personality
Max Planck was a gifted lecturer. Though he was described as a bit dry in front of a classroom, Planck’s students loved him. English chemist James Partington said he was "the best lecturer [he] ever heard," describing Planck’s lectures as crowded, popular affairs." There were always many standing around the room," according to Partington. "As the lecture-room was well heated and rather close, some of the listeners would from time to time drop to the floor, but this did not disturb the lecture."
Planck always had a strict schedule. In The Dilemmas of an Upright Man, Heilbron describes Planck as an "exact economist with his time." He ate breakfast precisely at 8 a.m then worked in a flurry until noon every day. In the evenings and during university breaks, though, he relaxed and entertained friends. His routine involved "a rigid schedule during term - writing and lecturing in the morning, lunch, rest, piano, walk, correspondence - and equally unrelenting recreation - mountain climbing without stopping or talking and Alpine accommodation without comfort or privacy," according to Heilbron.
Besides, Planck was a gifted pianist He hosted musical salons at his home, inviting other physicists and academics as well as professional musicians. According to Heilbron, "Planck’s sense of pitch was so perfect that he could scarcely enjoy a concert," lest it be ruined by an off-key note.
As for his hobbies, Planck stayed active throughout his life, hiking and mountain climbing well into old age. In his 80s, he still regularly climbed Alpine peaks reaching more than 9800 feet in height.
Quotes from others about the person
"Max Planck was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and one of the outstanding intellects of all time." - The New York Times
"[Planck’s] discovery became the basis of all twentieth-century research in physics and has almost entirely conditioned its development ever since. Without this discovery, it would not have been possible to establish a workable theory of molecules and atoms and the energy processes that govern their transformations. Moreover, it has shattered the whole framework of classical mechanics and electrodynamics and set science a fresh task: that of finding a new conceptual basis for all of physics." - Albert Einstein
Interests
playing the piano
Sport & Clubs
hiking, climbing
Connections
In March 1887, aged 28, Planck married Marie Merck. The couple had four children: Karl, Grete, Emma, and Erwin. Tragically, Planck would live to see the death of his wife and all their children. His wife, Marie, died in 1909 from tuberculosis. Karl was killed in battle in 1916 during World War I. Grete died in childbirth in 1917, then Emma died also in childbirth in 1919. (Their babies survived.) Erwin was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his suspected part in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Two years after the death of his first wife, Planck married Marga von Hösslin. They had one son, Hermann. Both Marga and Hermann outlived Planck.
Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War
In Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, Brandon R. Brown interweaves the voices and writings of Planck, his family, and his contemporaries - with many passages appearing in English for the first time - to create a portrait of a groundbreaking physicist working in the midst of war.
2015
Thirty Years that Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory
In this lucid layman's introduction to quantum theory, an eminent physicist and noted popularizer of science traces the development of quantum theory from the turn of the century to about 1930 - from Planck's seminal concept (still developing) to anti-particles, mesons, and Enrico Fermi's nuclear research.
1966
The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics
This book is a critical analysis, based on a broad physical, historical, and philosophical study, of how empirical phenomena led to the renunciation of classical physics and how experimental research - combined with mathematical thought and philosophical speculation - opened an entirely novel perspective.
The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science, With a New Afterword
In this moving and eloquent portrait, Heilbron describes how the founder of quantum theory rose to the pinnacle of German science. He shows how Planck suffered morally and intellectually as his lifelong habit of service to his country and to physics was confronted by the realities of World War I and the brutalities of the Third Reich.
Max Planck got a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Prize motivation was: "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta."
Max Planck got a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Prize motivation was: "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta."