Janez Strnad facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Janez Strnad
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| Born | March 4, 1934 |
| Died | November 28, 2015 (aged 81) |
Janez Strnad (born March 4, 1934 – died November 28, 2015) was a Slovene physicist. He was also well-known for making natural science easy to understand for many people. This means he was a "popularizer" of science, helping students and the public learn about amazing scientific ideas.
Life and Work
Janez Strnad was born in Ljubljana, which was then part of Yugoslavia and is now the capital of Slovenia.
He studied at the University of Ljubljana and earned his degree in technical physics in 1957. He then went on to get his Ph.D. in 1963. Most of his important research was done at the Jožef Stefan Institute.
Strnad loved teaching. From 1961, he taught physics at the University of Ljubljana. He became a full professor in 1974. He taught many different physics courses, helping students learn about the basics of physics and more advanced topics.
He was also a very busy writer, creating over 1000 works! In 1990, he wrote a famous book about tiny fundamental particles called Iz take so snovi kot sanje. This title means We are such stuff as dreams are made of. He also wrote a detailed book called Kvantna fizika (Quantum Physics). This book helped beginners understand tricky ideas like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which explains how we can't know everything about a tiny particle at the same time.
Strnad also wrote about how science connects to other parts of life. For example, he wrote an article called Znanost in politika v vinjetah, which means Science and politics in vignettes. This shows his broad interest in how science fits into the world.
His Books and Articles
Janez Strnad wrote many books and articles to help people learn about physics. He wrote several textbooks for university students, covering topics like Mechanics, Heat, Electricity, Optics, Special Theory of Relativity, Atoms, Molecules, Crystals, and Nuclei.
He also wrote books that were more for the general public, making physics exciting and understandable. Some of these include:
- Jožef Stefan, Ob stopetdesetletnici rojstva (Jožef Stefan, By his 150th anniversary of birth)
- Prapok Prasnov požene v dir (Primordial Bang drives Primordial Substance into a Gallop)
- Zgodbe iz fizike (Stories from Physics)
- Fiziki 1, Fiziki 2, Fiziki 3 (Physicists 1, 2, 3) – these books likely told stories about famous physicists.
- Razvoj fizike (The Development of Physics)
- Svet merjenj: o razvoju fizike in merjenju osnovnih fizikalnih količin (The World of Measurements: About the Development of Physics and Measuring of Fundamental Physical Quantities)
- Sto let fizike: od 1900 do 2000 (A Hundred Years of Physics: from 1900 to 2000)
Strnad also published many scientific articles in journals like Obzornik mat, fiz. and European Journal of Physics. These articles covered a wide range of topics, from Stefan's law about heat radiation to Brownian motion and Superconductivity. He even wrote about unusual interference experiments and the gravitational constant.
He also gave talks, called colloquiums, on interesting topics like the Bose-Einstein's condensation of atoms and the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Janez Strnad's work helped many people in Slovenia and beyond to better understand the fascinating world of physics.
