Max Plank

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Plank was born on Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858.

Planck was born into a large family and was brought up in a tradition which greatly respected scholarship, honesty, fairness, and generosity.

He did well at school, but not brilliantly, usually coming somewhere between third and eighth in his class. Music was perhaps his best subject and he was awarded the school prize in catechism and good conduct almost every year.

In July 1874, at the age of 16, he passed his school leaving examination with distinction but, he still did not have a clear idea of what he should to study at university. He discussed the possibility of a musical career.

He entered the University of Munich on 21 October 1874. After taking mostly mathematics classes at the start of his course, he enquired about the prospects of research in physics from Philipp von Jolly, the professor of physics at Munich, 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.

Planck received his doctorate in July 1879 at the age of 21 with a thesis on the second law of thermodynamics entitled On the Second Law of Mechanical Theory of Heat.

On 2 May 1885 Planck was appointed extraordinary professor of theoretical physics in Kiel and held this chair for four years. This now made him financially secure so he could now marry Marie Merck whom he had known for many years. She was the daughter of a Munich banker, and the pair were married on 31 March 1887. He now worked on thermodynamics publishing three excellent papers on applications to physical chemistry and thermoelectricity.

Planck was appointed as an extraordinary professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin on 29 November 1888, at the same time became director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. He was promoted to ordinary professor on 23 May 1892 and held the chair until he retired on 1 October 1927.

He studied thermodynamics, in particular examining the distribution of energy according to wavelength. By combining the formulae of Wien and Rayleigh, Planck announced in October 1900 a formula now known as Planck's radiation formula. Within two months Planck made a complete theoretical deduction of his formula renouncing classical physics and introducing the quanta of energy. On 14 December 1900 he presented his theoretical explanation involving quanta of energy at a meeting of the Physikalische Gesellschaft in Berlin. He announced his derivation of the relationship which was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete values or quanta.

Planck who was 42 years old when he made his historic quantum announcement, took only a minor part in the further development of quantum theory. This was left to Einstein with theories

...