Max Planck facts Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Max Planck
Born	(1858-04-23)April 23, 1858 Kiel, Holstein
Died	October 4, 1947(1947-10-04) (aged 89) Göttingen, West Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of Kiel Frederick William University University of Göttingen Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft
Alma mater	Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Doctoral advisor	Alexander von Brill
Doctoral students	Gustav Ludwig Hertz Erich Kretschmann Walther Meißner Walter Schottky Max von Laue Max Abraham Moritz Schlick Walther Bothe Julius Edgar Lilienfeld
Known for	Planck constant Planck postulate Planck's law of black body radiation
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1918)
Signature
Notes He is the father of Erwin Planck who was executed in 1945 by the Gestapo for his part in the July 20 plot.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (April 23, 1858 in Kiel - October 4, 1947 in Göttingen) was a physicist from Germany. He discovered quantum mechanics. He won the Nobel Prize in physics.

Life

Planck came from an old fashioned, intelligent family. His great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen; his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich; and his paternal uncle was a judge.

Max Planck's signature at ten years of age.

Planck was born in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was baptised with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx (a now not used variant of Markus or maybe simply an error for Max, which is actually short for Maximilian) was indicated as the primary name. However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and used this for the rest of his life.

He was the sixth child in the family, although two of his brothers and sisters were from his father's first marriage. Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Danish-Prussian war of 1864. 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. This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.

Images

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  Planck as a young man, 1878

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  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."

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  Planck in 1918, the year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory

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  From left to right: W. Nernst, A. Einstein, M. Planck, R.A. Millikan and von Laue at a dinner given by von Laue in Berlin on 11 November 1931

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  Max Planck's grave in Göttingen