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Max Planck: Energy
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The greatest crisis physics has ever known came to a head over afternoon tea on Sunday, October 7th, 1900, at the home of Max Planck in Berlin. The son of a professor of jurisprudence, Planck had held the chair in theoretical physics at the University of Berlin since 1889, specializing in thermodynamics – the science of heat change and energy conservation. He could easily have been sidetracked into a different career. At the age of 16, having just entered the University of Munich, he was told by Philipp von Jolly, a professor there, that the task of physics was more or less complete. The main theories were in place, all the great discoveries had been made, and only a few minor details needed filling in here and there by generations to come. It was a view, disastrously wrong but widely held at the time, fueled by technological triumphs and the seemingly all-pervasive power of Newton's mechanics and Maxwell's electromagnetic theory.
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Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, a German physicist born in 1858, is best known for originating the quantum theory. The theory revolutionized humanity's understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. It is one of the fundamental theories of modern physics. His hypothesis that atoms emit and absorb energy in discreet bundles, which he called quanta, led to the development of quantum physics. For his important work he was awarded the 1927 Franklin Medal.
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A new quantum theory enunciated by German physicist Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, 42, will have enormous impact on scientific thinking. Bodies that radiate energy do not emit the energy constantly but rather in discrete parcels which he calls quantums, says Planck.
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