ORIGINAL MAX PLANCK QUANTUM PHYSICS TABLE ORDER RECTOR BERLIN 1912 MAX LENZ for Sale

ORIGINAL MAX PLANCK QUANTUM PHYSICS TABLE ORDER RECTOR BERLIN 1912 MAX LENZ For Sale

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ORIGINAL MAX PLANCK QUANTUM PHYSICS TABLE ORDER RECTOR BERLIN 1912 MAX LENZ:
$907.32

Max Planck - rarity - original table arrangement Rector's dinner Berlin 1912 / Max Lenz
It is an original plan of the table arrangement designed for the corresponding event. Represent many greats of the scientific world from the time such as Max Planck, Max Wolff etc.(see gallery pictures).Your host presumably Max Lenz
(Max Albert Wilhelm Lenz (born June 13, 1850 in Greifswald, † April 6, 1932 in Berlin) was aGerman historian. )
Also included are two originally signed etchings.Dedicated to Max Lenz by the Historical Society in Berlin March 5, 1924Sheet size table arrangement approx. 73 x 63 cmSize of etching approx. 24 x 18.5 (sheet size approx. 31.5 x 27 cm)Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.Aufregender Fund im Kieler Kirchenarchiv: Max Planck, einer der berühmtesten Physiker Deutschlands, hieß offiziell gar nicht Max, sondern Marx Planck. Was nach einem späten Aprilscherz klingt, haben Historiker jetzt bestätigt. Gibt es bald Marx-Planck-Institute?
InfoKurz vor der Pensionierung noch solch eine Aufregung. Doch Anneliese Detlefsen, Sachbearbeiterin beim Kirchenkreis Kiel, bleibt entspannt und ausnehmend freundlich. "Mich bringt das nicht aus der Ruhe", sagt sie lächelnd. Dabei hätte sie allen Grund für einen schnellen Puls, denn in ihrem Archiv wurde eine sensationelle Entdeckung gemacht: Der NDR-Reporter Karl Dahmen will in alten Kieler Kirchenbüchern des Jahres 1858 herausgefunden haben, dass der Physiknobelpreisträger Max Planck, der Entdecker der Quantenphysik, in Wirklichkeit ganz anders hieß - nämlich Marx Planck.
Marx war eine früher gebräuchliche Übertragung des ursprünglich lateinischen Namens Marcus ins Deutsche. Unter anderem trägt ein Wiener Stadtteil diesen Namen: Sankt Marx, benannt nach dem Heiligen und Evangelisten. Der Komponist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart etwa ist auf dem Sankt Marxer Friedhof beerdigt.
In Kiel scheint die Sache klar: "Wir haben zwei Einträge", sagt Anneliese Detlefsen: Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck, Rufname Marx, getauft in der St.-Nikolai-Gemeinde zu Kiel. Im Original des Kirchenbuchs, geschrieben in lateinischen Buchstaben, wie auch in dessen zeitnah angefertigter Kopie - abgefasst in der altdeutschen Schrift - heiße es ganz eindeutig: Marx. Abgezeichnet von Pastor Carl Friedrich Hasselmann und damit bis heute amtlich gültig. Einwohnerämter wurden in Schleswig-Holstein nämlich erst 1874 eingeführt, 16 Jahre nach Plancks Geburt am 23. April 1858.
"Kann man kaum glauben, nicht wahr?", fragt Detlefsen voller Freude. Matthias Wünsche, der Pastor von Sankt Nikolai, hat das Original des Kirchenbuchs eben erst aus dem Archiv holen lassen. Auch er will sich die ganze Angelegenheit noch einmal genauer ansehen.
"Ich habe zunächst nicht begriffen, dass da Marx stand"
NDR-Reporter Dahmen hat keine Zweifel an seiner Entdeckung, auch wenn sie ihm am Anfang ebenfalls merkwürdig vorkam. Eigentlich hatte er nur herausfinden wollen, wer die Taufpaten von Planck waren, der in diesem Jahr seinen 150. Geburtstag gefeiert hätte. Um das herauszufinden, stöberte Dahmen zunächst in der Schreibschrift-Kopie des Kirchenbuchs, denn das Original ist für Hobbyforscher und Journalisten eigentlich zu wertvoll und damit tabu. "Ich habe zunächst überhaupt nicht begriffen, dass da Marx stand", sagt Dahmen zu SPIEGEL ONLINE. Erst Experten der schleswig-holsteinischen Landesbibliothek hätten schließlich diese Entdeckung gemacht.
Nach der ersten Aufregung folgten weitere Untersuchungen, unter anderem beim Nordelbischen Kirchenarchiv in Kiel, in dessen Tresor das Original des Kirchenbuchs verwahrt wurde. Und auch hier: Ungläubiges Köpfeschütteln, Überraschung - und schließlich eine Bestätigung der wundersamen Namensthese. "Das ist nicht wie bei den Hitler-Tagebüchern, das ist eindeutig", betont Archivchefin Annette Göhres. "Wir haben lange darüber gebrütet. Da gibt es keinen Zweifel."
Doch welche Folgen hat die Entdeckung nun? In der Pressestelle der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in München hat man erst durch den Anruf von SPIEGEL ONLINE von der Sache erfahren. Pressechef Bernd Wirsing äußert sich zurückhaltend: "Das müssen wir prüfen. Die Historiker müssen sich damit befassen. Wenn das auf gesicherter Grundlage steht, müssen wir uns überlegen, wie wir damit umgehen."
Vielleicht muss die ruhmreiche Institution ja bald neue Namensschilder an ihre 78 Institute und Forschungseinrichtungen in ganz Deutschland schrauben: Marx-Planck-Gesellschaft müsste dann wohl darauf stehen. Schließlich steht die Wissenschaft in der Pflicht, neue Erkenntnisse stets aufzunehmen und umzusetzen.ax Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck 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.
Planck’s earliest work was on the subject of thermodynamics, an interest he acquired from his studies under Kirchhoff, whom he greatly admired, and very considerably from reading R. Clausius’ publications. He published papers on entropy, on thermoelectric ity and on the theory of dilute solutions.
At the same time also the problems of radiation processes engaged his attention and he showed that these were to be considered as electromagnetic in nature. From these studies he was led to the problem of the distribution of energy in the spectrum of full radiation. Experimental observations on the wavelength distribution of the energy emitted by a black body as a function of temperature were at variance with the predictions of classical physics. Planck was able to deduce the relationship between the ener gy and the frequency of radiation. In a paper published in 1900, he announced his derivation of the relationship: this was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete values or quanta. The energy for a resonator of frequency v is hv where h is a universal constant, now called Planck’s constant.
This was not only Planck’s most important work but also marked a turning point in the history of physics. The importance of the discovery, with its far-reaching effect on classical physics, was not appreciated at first. However the evidence for its validi ty gradually became overwhelming as its application accounted for many discrepancies between observed phenomena and classical theory. Among these applications and developments may be mentioned Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect.
Planck’s work on the quantum theory, as it came to be known, was published in the Annalen der Physik. His work is summarized in two books Thermodynamik (Thermodynamics) (1897) and Theorie der Wärmestrahlung (Theory of heat radiat ion) (1906).
He was elected to Foreign Membership of the Royal Society in 1926, being awarded the Society’s Copley Medal in 1928.
Planck faced a troubled and tragic period in his life during the period of the Nazi government in Germany, when he felt it his duty to remain in his country but was openly opposed to some of the Government’s policies, particularly as regards the persecuti on of the Jews. In the last weeks of the war he suffered great hardship after his home was destroyed by bombing.
He was revered by his colleagues not only for the importance of his discoveries but for his great personal qualities. He was also a gifted pianist and is said to have at one time considered music as a career.
Planck was twice married. Upon his appointment, in 1885, to Associate Professor in his native town Kiel he married a friend of his childhood, Marie Merck, who died in 1909. He remarried her cousin Marga von Hösslin. Three of his children died young, leaving him with two sons.
He suffered a personal tragedy when one of them was executed for his part in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
He died at Göttingen on October 4, 1947.
""••'•RESIt was 100 years ago when Max Planck published a paper that gave birth toquantum mechanics - or so the story goes. History reveals, however, that Planck did notimmediately realize the consequences of his work and became a revolutionary against his willMax Planck:the reluctant revolutionaryHelge KraghACCORDING to the standard story,which is unfortunately still found inmany physics textbooks, quantum theory emerged when it was realized thatclassical physics predicts an energy distribution for black-body radiation thatdisagrees violently with that found experimentally. In the late 1890s, so thestory continues, the German physicistWilhelm Wien developed an expressionthat corresponded reasonably well withexperiment — but had no theoreticalfoundation. When Lord Rayleigh andJames Jeans then analysed black-bodyradiation from the perspective of classical physics, the resulting spectrum differed drastically from both experimentand the Wien law. Faced with this graveanomaly, Max Planck looked for a solution, during the course of which hewas forced to introduce the notion of"energy quanta". With the quantumhypothesis, a perfect match between the- credited for being the first person t0 reaNze that theory and experiment was obtained. Voila!Quantum theory was born.The story is a myth, closer to a fairytale than to historical truth. Quantumtheory did not owe its origin to any failure of classical physics, but instead toPlanck's profound insight in thermodynamics.The enigmatic entropyQuantum uncertainty- Max Planck is widelyenergy of a body is "quantized", but history showsthat this is probably not what he had in mind at thetime. Indeed, the "discovery" of quantum theoryshould not be seen as a moment of insight inDecember 1900, but as an extended process bymany physicists.| damental problem was the relationship* between mechanics and electrodynam-"'. ics, or between matter and the hypothetical ether. Could the laws of mechanics.; be reduced to electrodynamics?I Specialists in thermodynamics, meanwhile, focused on the relationship between the laws of mechanics and thetwo basic laws of heat - the principle ofenergy conservation and the second lawof thermodynamics. This discussionlooked at the status of statistical-molecular physics and therefore examined thefundamental question of whether allmatter is composed of atoms. Althoughthe two discussions had much in common, it was die latter in particular fromwhich quantum theory emerged.Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck wasdeeply interested in - even obsessedwith — the second law of thermodynamics. According to this law (in one of itsmany versions), no process is possible inwhich the only result is the transfer ofheat from a colder to a hotter body. Withthe help of the concept of entropy, introduced by Rudolf Clausius in 1865,the law can be reformulated to state thatthe entropy of an isolated system alwaysincreases or remains constant.Born in 1858 as the son of a professor of jurisprudence,Planck was appointed professor of physics at the University ofDuring the final years of the 19th century, many physicists Berlin in 1889. His doctoral dissertation from the Universityfound themselves discussing the validity of the mechanical of Munich dealt with the second law, which was also the subworld view, which until then had been taken for granted. The ject of most of his work until about 1905. Planck's thoughtsquestion at the heart of the debate was whether time-hon- centred on the concept of entropy and how to understandoured Newtonian mechanics could still be held as the valid "irreversibility" on the basis of the absolute validity of thedescription of all of nature. entropy law — the version of the second law of thermodyIn these discussions, which probed the very foundations of namics formulated in terms of the entropy concept,physics, electrodynamics and thermodynamics occupied centre In the 1890s the debate about the second law centred on diestage. As far as the electrodynamicists were concerned, the fun- statistical (or probabilistic) interpretation that Ludwig BoltzPHVSICS WORLD DECEMBER 2000mann had originally proposed back in1872 and expanded in 1877. Accordingto Boltzmann's molecular-mechanicalinterpretation, the entropy of a system isthe collective result of molecular motions. The second law is valid only ina statistical sense. Boltzmann's theory,which presupposed the existence ofatoms and molecules, was challengedby Wilhelm Ostwald and other "energeticists", who wanted to free physicsfrom the notion of atoms and base iton energy and related quantities.What was Planck's position in thisdebate? One might expect that he sidedwith the winners, or those who soonturned out to be the winners - namelyBoltzmann and the "atomists". But thiswas not the case. Planck's belief in theabsolute validity of the second lawmade him not only reject Boltzmann'sstatistical version of thermodynamicsbut also doubt the atomic hypothesis onwhich it rested. As early as 1882, Planckconcluded that the atomic conceptionof matter was irreconcilably opposed to the law of entropyincrease. "There will be a fight between these two hypothesesthat will cause the life of one of them," he predicted. As tothe outcome of the fight, he wrote that "in spite of the greatsuccesses of the atomistic theory in the past, we will finallyhave to give it up and to decide in favour of the assumptionof continuous matter".However, Planck's opposition to atomism waned during the1890s as he realized the power of the hypothesis and the unification it brought to a variety of physical and chemical phenomena. All the same, his attitude to atomism remainedambiguous and he continued to give priority to macroscopicthermodynamics and ignore Boltzmann's statistical theory.Indeed, by 1895 he was ready to embark on a major researchprogramme to determine thermodynamic irreversibility interms of some micro-mechanical or micro-electrodynamicalmodel that did not explicitly involve the atomic hypothesis.The programme not only expressed Planck's deep interest inthe concept of entropy, but also displayed his "aristocratic"attitude to physics: he focused on the fundamental aspectsand disregarded more mundane, applied ideas. His fascinPlanck rejected the statistical interpretation of thesecond law of thermodynamics developed byLudwig Boltzmann (above) and tried, mistakenly, tojustify irreversibility in terms of electrodynamicsElectrodynamics, Boltzmann showed,provides no more an "arrow of time"than mechanics. Planck had to findanother way of justifying irreversibility.The study of black-body radiationhad begun in 1859, when Robert Kirchhoff, Planck's predecessor as professorof physics in Berlin, argued that suchradiation was of a fundamental nature.By the 1890s several physicists - experimentalists and theorists — were investigating the spectral distribution of theradiation. Important progress was madein 1896 when Wien found a radiationlaw that was in convincing agreementwith the precise measurements beingperformed at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin.According to Wien, the spectral density, u, - the radiation energy density perunit frequency - depended on the frequency, V, and temperature, T, accordingto the formula «(v, T) = av3exp((3v/ T)-],where a and (3 are constants to be determined empirically. However, Wien's lawlacked a satisfactory theoretical foundation and was, for thisreason, not acceptable to Planck. It is important to note thatPlanck's dissatisfaction was not rooted in Wien's formula -which he fully accepted — but in Wien's derivation of it. Planckwas not interested in producing an empirically correct law, butin establishing a rigorous derivation of it. In this way, hebelieved, he would be able to justify the entropy law.Guided by Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases, Planck formulated what he called a "principle of elementary disorder"that did not rely either on mechanics or on electrodynamics.He used it to define the entropy of an ideal oscillator (dipole)but was careful not to identify such oscillators with specificatoms or molecules. In 1899 Planck found an expression forthe oscillator entropy from which Wien's law followed. Thelaw (sometimes referred to as the Wien-Planck law) had nowobtained a fundamental status. Planck was satisfied. After all,the law had the additional qualification that it agreed beautifully with measurements. Or so it was thought.Discrepancy with theoryThe harmony between theory and experiment did not lastation with entropy, which was shared by only a handful of long. To Planck's consternation, experiments performed inother physicists, was not considered to be of central importance or of providing significant results. And yet it did.Black-body radiationFrom the perspective of Planck and his contemporaries, itwas natural to seek an explanation of the entropy law inMaxwell's electrodynamics. After all, Maxwell's theory wasfundamental and was supposed to govern the behaviour ofthe microscopic oscillators that produced the heat radiationemitted by black bodies. Planck initially believed that he hadjustified the irreversibility of radiation processes through thelack of time symmetry in Maxwell's equations - i.e. thatthe laws of electrodynamics distinguish between past andpresent, between forward-going and backward-going time.However, in 1897 Boltzmann demolished this argument.Berlin showed that the Wien-Planck law did not correctlydescribe the spectrum at very low frequencies. Somethinghad gone wrong, and Planck had to return to his desk toreconsider why the apparently fundamental derivation produced an incorrect result. The problem, it seemed to him, layin the definition of the oscillator's entropy.With a revised expression for the entropy of a single oscillator, Planck obtained a new distribution law that he presented at a meeting of the German Physical Society on 19October 1900. The spectral distribution was now given as«(v,T) = OCV3[exp(pv/T)- I]"1, which approximates Wien'slaw at relatively high frequencies. More interestingly, thisfirst version of the famous Planck radiation law also agreedperfectly with the experimental spectrum in the lower-frequency infrared region. Although it included a constant P32PHYSICS WORLD DECEMBEK 2000130 -12011010090«f 80(0 70S 605040302010that Planck believed was fundamental,the subsequent shift from (3 to h wasmore than merely a relabelling. Planck'sderivation did not make use of energyquantization and neither did it rely onBoltzmann's probabilistic interpretation of entropy.Those developments were to cometwo months later in "an act of desperation" as Planck later recalled. Beforeproceeding to this act of desperation,we need to consider the Rayleigh-Jeanslaw and the so-called "ultraviolet catastrophe", if only to discard it as historically irrelevant. In June 1900 Rayleighpointed out that classical mechanics,when applied to the oscillators of ablack body, leads to an energy distribution that increases in proportion tothe square of the frequency - utterlyin conflict with the data. He based hisreasoning on the so-called equipartitiontheorem from which it follows that theaverage energy of the oscillators making up a black body will be given bykT, where A: is Boltzmann's constant.Five years later, Rayleigh and Jeanspresented what is still known as theRayleigh-Jeans formula, usually writtenas u(v,T)-(8nv2/c3)kT, where c is thespeed of light. The result is an energydensity that keeps on increasing as thefrequency gets higher and higher, becoming "catastrophic" in the ultravioletregion. In spite of its prominent role inphysics textbooks, the formula played nopart at all in the earliest phase of quantum theory. Planck did not accept theequipartition theorem as fundamental,and therefore ignored it. Incidentally,neither did Rayleigh and Jeans consider the theorem to beuniversally valid. The "ultraviolet catastrophe" — a namecoined by Paul Ehrenfest in 1911 — only became a matter of discussion in a later phase of quantum theory.In November 1900 Planck realized that his new entropyexpression was scarcely more than an inspired guess. Tosecure a more fundamental derivation he now turned toBoltzmann's probabilistic notion of entropy that he hadignored for so long. But although Planck now adoptedBoltzmann's view, he did not fully convert to the Austrianphysicist's thinking. He remained convinced that the entropylaw was absolute — and not inherently probabilistic — andtherefore reinterpreted Boltzmann's theory in his ownnon-probabilistic way. It was during this period that he statedfor the first time what has since become known as the"Boltzmann equation" S= klogW, which relates the entropy,S, to the molecular disorder, W.To find W, Planck had to be able to count the number ofways a given energy can be distributed among a set of oscillators. It was in order to find this counting procedure thatPlanck, inspired by Boltzmann, introduced what he called"energy elements", namely the assumption that the total1 2 3 4 5 6wavelength (u.m)Law breaker - in 1896 Wilhelm Wien derived anempirical law that appeared to accurately describethe radiation emitted by a black body. However, asthese spectra measured by Otto Lummer and ErnstPringsheim in November 1899 reveal, Wien'stheoretical curve (green line) did not agree with theexperimental data (red line) at long wavelengths,indicating the inadequacy of Wien's law. Faced withthis grave anomaly, Planck looked for a solution,during the course of this he was forced to introducethe notion of "energy quanta".energy of the black-body oscillators, E,is divided into finite portions of energy,£, via a process known as "quantization". In his seminal paper publishedin late 1900 and presented to the German Physical Society on 14 December -100 years ago this month - Planckregarded the energy "as made up of acompletely determinate number of finite equal parts, and for this purpose Iuse the constant of nature h=6.55 X 10"27(erg sec)". Moreover, he continued, "thisconstant, once multiplied by the common frequency of the resonators, givesthe energy element £ in ergs, and by division of E by £ we get the number P ofenergy elements to be distributed overthe jV resonators".Quantum theory was born. Or was it?Surely Planck's constant had appeared,with the same symbol and roughlythe same value as used today. But theessence of quantum theory is energyquantization, and it is far from evidentthat this is what Planck had in mind. Ashe explained in a letter written in 1931,the introduction of energy quanta in1900 was "a purely formal assumptionand I really did not give it much thoughtexcept that no matter what the cost, Imust bring about a positive result".Planck did not emphasize the discretenature of energy processes and was unconcerned with the detailed behaviourof his abstract oscillators. Far moreinteresting than the quantum discontinuity (whatever it meant) was the impressive accuracy of the new radiationlaw and the constants of nature that appeared in it.A conservative revolutionaryIf a revolution occurred in physics in December 1900, nobody seemed to notice it. Planck was no exception, and theimportance ascribed to his work is largely a historical reconstruction. Whereas Planck's radiation law was quickly accepted, what we today consider its conceptual novelty - itsbasis in energy quantization — was scarcely noticed. Very fewphysicists expressed any interest in the justification of Planck'sformula, and during die first few years of the 20th century noone considered his results to conflict with the foundations ofclassical physics. As for Planck himself, he strove hard to keephis theory on die solid ground of the classical physics that heloved so much. Like Copernicus, Planck became a revolutionary against his will.Planck was the archetype of the classical mind, a noble product of his time and culture. Throughout his distinguishedcareer as a physicist and statesman of science, he maintainedthat the ultimate goal of science was a unified world picturebuilt on absolute and universal laws of science. He firmlybelieved that such laws existed and that they reflected theinner mechanisms of nature, an objective reality wherePHYSICS WORLD DECEMBER 2000 33human thoughts and passions had noplace. The second law of thermodynamics was always his favourite example of how a law of physics couldbe progressively freed from anthropomorphic associations and turned into apurely objective and universal law. After1900 he increasingly recognized Boltzmann's probabilistic law of entropy asgrand and fundamental, but he stoppedshort of accepting its central message,that there is a finite (if exceedingly small)probability that the entropy of an isolated system decreases over time. Onlyin about 1912 did he give up this lastreservation and accepted the truly statistical nature of the second law.As to the quantum discontinuity — thecrucial feature that the energy does notvary continuously, but in "jumps" - hebelieved for a long time that it was a kindof mathematical hypothesis, an artefactthat did not refer to real energy exchanges between matter and radiation.From his point of view, there was no reason to suspect a breakdown of the laws of classical mechanicsand electrodynamics. That Planck did not see his theory as adrastic departure from classical physics is also illustrated byhis strange silence: between 1901 and 1906 he did not publishanything at all on black-body radiation or quantum theory.Only in about 1908, to a large extent influenced by the penetrating analysis of the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz, didPlanck convert to the view that the quantum of action represents an irreducible phenomenon beyond the understandingof classical physics.Over the next three years Planck became convinced thatquantum theory marked the beginning of a new chapter inthe history of physics and, in this sense, was of a revolutionary nature. "The hypothesis of quanta will never vanish fromthe world," he proudly declared in a lecture of 1911. "I do notbelieve I am going too far if I express the opinion that withthis hypothesis the foundation is laid for the construction of atheory which is someday destined to permeate the swift anddelicate events of the molecular world with a new light."Einstein: the real founder of quantum theory?So is December 2000 the right moment to celebrate the centenary of quantum theory? In other words, did Planck reallyintroduce the quantum hypothesis a century ago? The historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, who carefullyanalysed Planck's route to the black-body radiation law andits aftermath, certainly thought Planck does not deserve thecredit (see further reading).However, there is evidence both for and against Kuhn'scontroversial interpretation, which has been much discussedby historians of physics. There is a fairly strong case that weought to wait a few more years before celebrating the quantum centenary. On the other hand, the case can be disputedand it is clearly not unreasonable to chose 2000 as the centenary and Planck as the father of quantum theory. Besides,there is a long tradition of assigning paternity to Planck, who,after all, received the 1918 Nobel Prize for Physics for "his disMass recognition - quantum theory only really took off following the first "Solvay" conference in Brussels in1911, attended by leading lights from physics. But even then it was not believed that quantum theory hadanything to do with atomic structure. Planck is standing second from the left. Einstein is second on the right.covery of energy quanta". Jubilees and similar celebrationsenhance traditions, they do not question them.As Kuhn points out, nowhere in his papers of 1900 and 1901did Planck clearly write that the energy of a single oscillatorcan only attain discrete energies according to E-nZ-nh\,where n is an integer. If this is what he meant, why didn't he sayso? And if he realized that he had introduced energy quantization — a strange, non-classical concept — why did he remainsilent for more than four years? Moreover, in his Lectures on theTheory of Thermal Radiation from 1906, Planck argued for a continuum theory that made no mention of discrete oscillatorenergy. If he had "seen the light" as early as 1900 — as he laterclaimed - what caused him to change his mind six years later?Could the answer be that he did not change his mind becausehe had not seen the light?These are only some of the arguments put forward byKuhn and those historians of physics who support his case.Like historical arguments in general, the controversy overthe quantum discontinuity rests on a series of evidence andcounter-evidence that can only be evaluated qualitatively andas a whole, not determined in the clear-cut manner that weknow from physics (or rather from some physics textbooks).If Planck did not introduce the hypothesis of energy quantain 1900, who did? Lorentz and even Boltzmann have beenmentioned as candidates, but a far stronger case can be madethat it was Einstein who first recognized the essence of quantum theory. Einstein's remarkable contributions to the earlyphase of quantum theory are well known and beyond dispute.Most famous is his 1905 theory of light quanta (or photons),but he also made important contributions in 1907 on thequantum theory of the specific heats of solids and in 1909 onenergy fluctuations.There is no doubt that the young Einstein saw deeper thanPlanck, and that Einstein alone recognized that the quantumdiscontinuity was an essential part of Planck's theory ofblack-body radiation. Whether this makes Einstein "the truediscoverer of the quantum discontinuity", as claimed by the34 PHYSIC S WORL D DECEMBE R 200 0Genuine genius? - some historians regard Einstein as the true father ofquantum theory. He developed the theory of light quanta in 1905 and madeimportant contributions in 1907 to the quantum theory of the specific heats ofsolids and in 1909 to energy fluctuations. Shown here is Einstein (right)receiving the Planck medal from Planck himself in July 1929.French historian of physics Olivier Darrigol, is another matter. What is important is that Planck's role in the discovery ofquantum theory was complex and somewhat ambiguous. Tocredit him alone with the discovery, as is done in some physicstextbooks, is much too simplistic. Other physicists, and Einstein in particular, were crucially involved in the creation ofquantum theory. The "discovery" should be seen as an extended process and not as a moment of insight communicatedon a particular day in late 1900.Einstein's 1907 theory of specific heats was an importantelement in the process that established quantum theory as amajor field of physics. The changed status of quantum theory was recognized institutionally with the first Solvay conference of 1911, on "radiation theory and the quanta", an eventthat heralded the take-off phase of quantum theory. The participants in Brussels realized that with quantum theory thecourse of physics was about to change. Where the development would lead, nobody could tell. For example, it was notbelieved that quantum theory had anything to do with atomicstructure. Two years later, with the advent of Niels Bohr'satomic theory, quantum theory took a new turn that eventually would lead to quantum mechanics and a new foundationof the physicists' world picture.The routes of history are indeed unpredictable.Further reading0 Darrigol 1992 From c-Numbers to q-Numbers: The Classical Analogy in theHistory of Quantum Theory (University of California Press, Berkeley)H Kragh 1999 Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the TwentiethCentury (Princeton University Press)TS Kuhn 1978 Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity: 1894-1912(Clarendon Press, Oxford)P Stehle 1994 Order, Chaos, Order: The Transition from Classical to QuantumAlso in:-GENEVA JOUY-EN JOSAS DARMSTADT PRAGUETHE ULTIMATE IN COOLFrom CryophysicsWith a Base Temperature of 4.2K at either 0.5, 1 or1.5 Watts, the Sumitomo Cryocoolers are the Ultimate in CryogenFree Cooling. Reliable, flexible and powerful, they offer the totalsolution to all your cryogen free cooling needs.For more information on Sumitomo Cryocoolers, or any of theproducts within the Cryophysics range, please contact your localCryophysics office. We look forward to hearing from you.PHYSICS WORLD DECEMBER 2000 35
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS[1] (German: [maks ˈplaŋk] (About this soundlisten);[2] English: /ˈplæŋk/;[3] 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.[4]
Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory,[5] which revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. In 1948, the German scientific institution Kaiser Wilhelm Society (of which Planck was twice president) was renamed Max Planck Society (MPG). The MPG now includes 83 institutions representing a wide range of scientific directions.Contents1 Life and career1.1 Academic career1.2 Family1.3 Professor at Berlin University1.4 Black-body radiation1.5 Einstein and the theory of relativity1.6 First World War1.7 Post-war and the Weimar Republic1.8 Quantum mechanics1.9 Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War2 Religious views3 Publications4 See also5 References6 Sources7 External linksLife and career
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Max Planck" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen; his father was a law professor at the University of Kiel and Munich. One of his uncles was also a judge.[6]Max Planck's signature at ten years of agePlanck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was baptized with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx (a now obsolete variant of Markus or maybe simply an error for Max, which is actually short for Maximilian) was indicated as the "appellation name".[7] However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and used this for the rest of his life.[8]
He was the 6th child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. War was common during Planck's early years and among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Second Schleswig War in 1864.[6] In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann Müller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17.[9] This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.
Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.A side portrait of Planck as a young adult, c. 1878The Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, "In this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes."[10] Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, but only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and so began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics.
In 1877, he went to the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly, and bored his listeners, while Kirchhoff spoke in carefully prepared lectures which were dry and monotonous. He soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Clausius's writings, which led him to choose thermodynamics as his field.
In October 1878, Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February 1879 defended his dissertation, Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie (On the second law of thermodynamics). He briefly taught mathematics and physics at his former school in Munich.
By the year 1880, Planck had obtained the two highest academic degrees offered in Europe. The first was a doctorate degree after he completed his paper detailing his research and theory of thermodynamics.[6] He then presented his thesis called Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures), which earned him a habilitation.
Academic careerWith the completion of his habilitation thesis, Planck became an unpaid Privatdozent (German academic rank comparable to lecturer/assistant professor) in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work on the field of heat theory and discovered one after another the same thermodynamical formalism as Gibbs without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy occupied a central role in his work.
In April 1885, the University of Kiel appointed Planck as associate professor of theoretical physics. Further work on entropy and its treatment, especially as applied in physical chemistry, followed. He published his Treatise on Thermodynamics in 1897.[11] He proposed a thermodynamic basis for Svante Arrhenius's theory of electrolytic dissociation.
In 1889, he was named the successor to Kirchhoff's position at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin[12] – presumably thanks to Helmholtz's intercession – and by 1892 became a full professor. In 1907 Planck was offered Boltzmann's position in Vienna, but turned it down to stay in Berlin. During 1909, as a University of Berlin professor, he was invited to become the Ernest Kempton Adams Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at Columbia University in New York City. A series of his lectures were translated and co-published by Columbia University professor A. P. Wills.[13] He retired from Berlin on 10 January 1926,[14] and was succeeded by Erwin Schrödinger.[15]
FamilyIn March 1887, Planck married Marie Merck (1861–1909), sister of a school fellow, and moved with her into a sublet apartment in Kiel. They had four children: Karl (1888–1916), the twins Emma (1889–1919) and Grete (1889–1917), and Erwin (1893–1945).
After the apartment in Berlin, the Planck family lived in a villa in Berlin-Grunewald, Wangenheimstrasse 21. Several other professors from University of Berlin lived nearby, among them theologian Adolf von Harnack, who became a close friend of Planck. Soon the Planck home became a social and cultural center. Numerous well-known scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were frequent visitors. The tradition of jointly performing music had already been established in the home of Helmholtz.
After several happy years, in July 1909 Marie Planck died, possibly from tuberculosis. In March 1911 Planck married his second wife, Marga von Hoesslin (1882–1948); in December his fifth child Hermann was born.
During the First World War Planck's second son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914, while his oldest son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. Grete died in 1917 while giving birth to her first child. Her sister died the same way two years later, after having married Grete's widower. Both granddaughters survived and were named after their mothers. Planck endured these losses stoically.
In January 1945, Erwin, to whom he had been particularly close, was sentenced to death by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof because of his participation in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. Erwin was executed on 23 January 1945.[16]
Professor at Berlin UniversityAs a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, Planck joined the local Physical Society. He later wrote about this time: "In those days I was essentially the only theoretical physicist there, whence things were not so easy for me, because I started mentioning entropy, but this was not quite fashionable, since it was regarded as a mathematical spook".[17] Thanks to his initiative, the various local Physical Societies of Germany merged in 1898 to form the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, DPG); from 1905 to 1909 Planck was the president.Plaque at the Humboldt University of Berlin: "Max Planck, discoverer of the elementary quantum of action h, taught in this building from 1889 to 1928."Planck started a six-semester course of lectures on theoretical physics, "dry, somewhat impersonal" according to Lise Meitner, "using no notes, never making mistakes, never faltering; the best lecturer I ever heard" according to an English participant, James R. Partington, who continues: "There were always many standing around the room. 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 did not establish an actual "school"; the number of his graduate students was only about 20, among them:
1897 Max Abraham (1875–1922)1903 Max von Laue (1879–1960)1904 Moritz Schlick (1882–1936)1906 Walther Meissner (1882–1974)1907 Fritz Reiche (1883–1960)1912 Walter Schottky (1886–1976)1914 Walther Bothe (1891–1957)[18]Black-body radiationIn 1894, Planck turned his attention to the problem of black-body radiation. The problem had been stated by Kirchhoff in 1859: "how does the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body (a perfect absorber, also known as a cavity radiator) depend on the frequency of the radiation (i.e., the color of the light) and the temperature of the body?". The question had been explored experimentally, but no theoretical treatment agreed with experimental values. Wilhelm Wien proposed Wien's law, which correctly predicted the behaviour at high frequencies, but failed at low frequencies. The Rayleigh–Jeans law, another approach to the problem, agreed with experimental results at low frequencies, but created what was later known as the "ultraviolet catastrophe" at high frequencies. However, contrary to many textbooks, this was not a motivation for Planck.[19]
Planck's first proposed solution to the problem in 1899 followed from what Planck called the "principle of elementary disorder", which allowed him to derive Wien's law from a number of assumptions about the entropy of an ideal oscillator, creating what was referred to as the Wien–Planck law. Soon it was found that experimental evidence did not confirm the new law at all, to Planck's frustration. Planck revised his approach, deriving the first version of the famous Planck black-body radiation law, which described the experimentally observed black-body spectrum well. It was first proposed in a meeting of the DPG on 19 October 1900 and published in 1901. This first derivation did not include energy quantisation, and did not use statistical mechanics, to which he held an aversion. In November 1900 Planck revised this first approach, relying on Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics as a way of gaining a more fundamental understanding of the principles behind his radiation law. As Planck was deeply suspicious of the philosophical and physical implications of such an interpretation of Boltzmann's approach, his recourse to them was, as he later put it, "an act of despair ... I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics".[19]
The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition, now known as the Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit:
{\displaystyle E=hu }E=huwhere h is Planck's constant, also known as Planck's action quantum (introduced already in 1899), and ν is the frequency of the radiation. Note that the elementary units of energy discussed here are represented by hν and not simply by ν. Physicists now call these quanta photons, and a photon of frequency ν will have its own specific and unique energy. The total energy at that frequency is then equal to hν multiplied by the number of photons at that frequency.Planck in 1918, the year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theoryAt first Planck considered that quantisation was only "a purely formal assumption ... actually I did not think much about it ..."; nowadays this assumption, incompatible with classical physics, is regarded as the birth of quantum physics and the greatest intellectual accomplishment of Planck's career (Ludwig Boltzmann had been discussing in a theoretical paper in 1877 the possibility that the energy states of a physical system could be discrete). The discovery of Planck's constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants upon which much of quantum theory is based. In recognition of Planck's fundamental contribution to a new branch of physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1918 (he actually received the award in 1919).[20][21]
Subsequently, Planck tried to grasp the meaning of energy quanta, but to no avail. "My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused me much trouble." Even several years later, other physicists like Rayleigh, Jeans, and Lorentz set Planck's constant to zero in order to align with classical physics, but Planck knew well that this constant had a precise nonzero value. "I am unable to understand Jeans' stubbornness – he is an example of a theoretician as should never be existing, the same as Hegel was for philosophy. So much the worse for the facts if they don't fit."[22]
Max Born wrote about Planck: "He was, by nature, a conservative mind; he had nothing of the revolutionary and was thoroughly skeptical about speculations. Yet his belief in the compelling force of logical reasoning from facts was so strong that he did not flinch from announcing the most revolutionary idea which ever has shaken physics."[1]
Einstein and the theory of relativityIn 1905, the three epochal papers by Albert Einstein were published in the journal Annalen der Physik. Planck was among the few who immediately recognized the significance of the special theory of relativity. Thanks to his influence, this theory was soon widely accepted in Germany. Planck also contributed considerably to extend the special theory of relativity. For example, he recast the theory in terms of classical action.[23]
Einstein's hypothesis of light quanta (photons), based on Heinrich Hertz's 1887 discovery (and further investigation by Philipp Lenard) of the photoelectric effect, was initially rejected by Planck. He was unwilling to discard completely Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics. "The theory of light would be thrown back not by decades, but by centuries, into the age when Christiaan Huygens dared to fight against the mighty emission theory of Isaac Newton ..."[24]
In 1910, Einstein pointed out the anomalous behavior of specific heat at low temperatures as another example of a phenomenon which defies explanation by classical physics. Planck and Nernst, seeking to clarify the increasing number of contradictions, organized the First Solvay Conference (Brussels 1911). At this meeting Einstein was able to convince Planck.
Meanwhile, Planck had been appointed dean of Berlin University, whereby it was possible for him to call Einstein to Berlin and establish a new professorship for him (1914). Soon the two scientists became close friends and met frequently to play music together.
First World WarAt the onset of the First World War Planck endorsed the general excitement of the public, writing that, "Besides much that is horrible, there is also much that is unexpectedly great and beautiful: the smooth solution of the most difficult domestic political problems by the unification of all parties (and) ... the extolling of everything good and noble."[25][26] Planck also signed the infamous "Manifesto of the 93 intellectuals", a pamphlet of polemic war propaganda (while Einstein retained a strictly pacifistic attitude which almost led to his imprisonment, only being spared thanks to his Swiss citizenship).
In 1915, when Italy was still a neutral power, he voted successfully for a scientific paper from Italy, which received a prize from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where Planck was one of four permanent presidents.
Post-war and the Weimar RepublicIn the turbulent post-war years, Planck, now the highest authority of German physics, issued the slogan "persevere and continue working" to his colleagues.
In October 1920, he and Fritz Haber established the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Organization of German Science), aimed at providing financial support for scientific research. A considerable portion of the money the organization would distribute was raised abroad.
Planck also held leading positions at Berlin University, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the German Physical Society and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (which became the Max Planck Society in 1948). During this time economic conditions in Germany were such that he was hardly able to conduct research. In 1926, Planck became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[27]
During the interwar period, Planck became a member of the Deutsche Volks-Partei (German People's Party), the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann, which aspired to liberal aims for domestic policy and rather revisionistic aims for politics around the world.
Planck disagreed with the introduction of universal suffrage and later expressed the view that the Nazi dictatorship resulted from "the ascent of the rule of the crowds".[28]
Quantum mechanics
From left to right: W. Nernst, A. Einstein, Planck, R.A. Millikan and von Laue at a dinner given by von Laue in Berlin on 11 November 1931At the end of the 1920s Bohr, Heisenberg and Pauli had worked out the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it was rejected by Planck, and by Schrödinger, Laue, and Einstein as well. Planck expected that wave mechanics would soon render quantum theory—his own child—unnecessary. This was not to be the case, however. Further work only served to underscore the enduring central importance of quantum theory, even against his and Einstein's philosophical revulsions. Planck experienced the truth of his own earlier observation from his struggle with the older views in his younger years: "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."[29]
Nazi dictatorship and the Second World WarWhen the Nazis came to power in 1933, Planck was 74. He witnessed many Jewish friends and colleagues expelled from their positions and humiliated, and hundreds of scientists emigrate from Nazi Germany. Again he tried to "persevere and continue working" and asked scientists who were considering emigration to remain in Germany. Nevertheless, he did help his nephew, the economist Hermann Kranold, to emigrate to London after his arrest.[30] He hoped the crisis would abate soon and the political situation would improve.
Otto Hahn asked Planck to gather well-known German professors in order to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, but Planck replied, "If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the positions of the others."[31] Under Planck's leadership, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG) avoided open conflict with the Nazi regime, except concerning the Jewish Fritz Haber. Planck tried to discuss the issue with the recently appointed Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler, but was unsuccessful, as to Hitler "the Jews are all Communists, and these are my enemies." In the following year, 1934, Haber died in exile.[32]
One year later, Planck, having been the president of the KWG since 1930, organized in a somewhat provocative style an official commemorative meeting for Haber. He also succeeded in secretly enabling a number of Jewish scientists to continue working in institutes of the KWG for several years. In 1936, his term as president of the KWG ended, and the Nazi government pressured him to refrain from seeking another term.
As the political climate in Germany gradually became more hostile, Johannes Stark, prominent exponent of Deutsche Physik ("German Physics", also called "Aryan Physics") attacked Planck, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg for continuing to teach the theories of Einstein, calling them "white Jews". The "Hauptamt Wissenschaft" (Nazi government office for science) started an investigation of Planck's ancestry, claiming that he was "1/16 Jewish", but Planck himself denied it.[33]Planck's grave in GöttingenIn 1938 Planck celebrated his 80th birthday. The DPG held a celebration, during which the Max-Planck medal (founded as the highest medal by the DPG in 1928) was awarded to French physicist Louis de Broglie. At the end of 1938, the Prussian Academy lost its remaining independence and was taken over by Nazis (Gleichschaltung). Planck protested by resigning his presidency. He continued to travel frequently, giving numerous public talks, such as his talk on Religion and Science, and five years later he was sufficiently fit to climb 3,000-metre peaks in the Alps.
During the Second World War the increasing number of Allied bombing missions against Berlin forced Planck and his wife to temporarily leave the city and live in the countryside. In 1942 he wrote: "In me an ardent desire has grown to persevere this crisis and live long enough to be able to witness the turning point, the beginning of a new rise." In February 1944, his home in Berlin was completely destroyed by an air raid, annihilating all his scientific records and correspondence. His rural retreat was threatened by the rapid advance of the Allied armies from both sides.
In 1944 Planck's son Erwin was arrested by the Gestapo following the attempted assassination of Hitler in the 20 July plot. He was tried and sentenced to death by the People's Court in October 1944. Erwin was hanged at Berlin's Plötzensee Prison in January 1945. The death of his son destroyed much of Planck's will to live.[34] After the end of the war Planck, his second wife, and his son by her were brought to a relative in Göttingen, where Planck died on 4 October 1947. His grave is situated in the old Stadtfriedhof (City Cemetery) in Göttingen.[35]
Religious viewsPlanck was a member of the Lutheran Church in Germany.[36] He was very tolerant towards alternative views and religions.[37] In a lecture in 1937 entitled "Religion und Naturwissenschaft" ("Religion and Natural Science") he suggested the importance of these symbols and rituals related directly with a believer's ability to worship God, but that one must be mindful that the symbols provide an imperfect illustration of divinity. He criticized atheism for being focused on the derision of such symbols, while at the same time warned of the over-estimation of the importance of such symbols by believers.[38]
Planck was tolerant and favorable to all religions. Although he remained in the Lutheran Church, he did not promote Christian or Biblical views. He believed "the faith in miracles must yield, step by step, before the steady and firm advance of the facts of science, and its total defeat is undoubtedly a matter of time."[39]
In "Religion und Naturwissenschaft", Planck expressed the view that God is everywhere present, and held that "the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead is conveyed by the holiness of symbols." Atheists, he thought, attach too much importance to what are merely symbols. He was a churchwarden from 1920 until his death, and believed in an almighty, all-knowing, beneficent God (though not necessarily a personal one). Both science and religion wage a "tireless battle against skepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition" with the goal "toward God!"[39]
Planck said in 1944, "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent spirit [orig. geist]. This spirit is the matrix of all matter."[40]
Planck argued that the concept of God is important to both religion and science, but in different ways: "Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations … To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view".[41]
Furthermore, Planck wrote,
..."to believe" means "to recognize as a truth," and the knowledge of nature, continually advancing on incontestably safe tracks, has made it utterly impossible for a person possessing some training in natural science to recognize as founded on truth the many reports of extraordinary occurrences contradicting the laws of nature, of miracles which are still commonly regarded as essential supports and confirmations of religious doctrines, and which formerly used to be accepted as facts pure and simple, without doubt or criticism. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely.[42]
Noted historian of science John L. Heilbron characterized Planck's views on God as deistic.[43] Heilbron further relates that when asked about his religious affiliation, Planck replied that although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe "in a personal God, let alone a Christian God".[44].
PublicationsPlanck, M. (1900a). "Über eine Verbesserung der Wienschen Spektralgleichung". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 2: 202–204. Translated in ter Haar, D. (1967). "On an Improvement of Wien's Equation for the Spectrum" (PDF). The Old Quantum Theory. Pergamon Press. pp. 79–81. LCCN 66029628.Planck, M. (1900b). "Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 2: 237. Translated in ter Haar, D. (1967). "On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum" (PDF). The Old Quantum Theory. Pergamon Press. p. 82. LCCN 66029628.Planck, M. (1900c). "Entropie und Temperatur strahlender Wärme" [Entropy and Temperature of Radiant Heat]. Annalen der Physik. 306 (4): 719–737. Bibcode:1900AnP...306..719P. doi:10.1002/andp.19003060410.Planck, M. (1900d). "Über irreversible Strahlungsvorgänge" [On Irreversible Radiation Processes]. Annalen der Physik. 306 (1): 69–122. Bibcode:1900AnP...306...69P. doi:10.1002/andp.19003060105.Planck, M. (1901). "Ueber das Gesetz der Energieverteilung im Normalspektrum". Annalen der Physik. 309 (3): 553–563. Bibcode:1901AnP...309..553P. doi:10.1002/andp.19013090310. Translated in Ando, K. "On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 October 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2011.Planck, M. (1903). Treatise on Thermodynamics. Ogg, A. (transl.). London: Longmans, Green & Co. OL 7246691M.Planck, M. (1906). Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung. Leipzig: J.A. Barth. LCCN 07004527.Planck, M. (1914). The Theory of Heat Radiation. Masius, M. (transl.) (2nd ed.). P. Blakiston's Son & Co. OL 7154661M.Planck, M. (1915). Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics. Wills, A. P. (transl.). Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-69730-4.Planck, M. (1943). "Zur Geschichte der Auffindung des physikalischen Wirkungsquantums". Naturwissenschaften. 31 (14–15): 153–159. Bibcode:1943NW.....31..153P. doi:10.1007/BF01475738. S2CID 44899488.See alsoList of things named after Max PlanckGerman inventors and discoverersPhoton polarizationStatue of Max PlanckZero-point energy
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1918Max Karl Ernst Ludwig PlanckMax Karl Ernst Ludwig PlanckPrize share: 1/1
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1918 was awarded to Max Planck "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta".
Max Planck received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1919. During the selection process in 1918, the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of the year's nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year, and this statute was then applied. Max Planck therefore received his Nobel Prize for 1918 one year later, in 1919.