Max Planck
1858 – 1947 · Germany · Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918
Quantised energy and started quantum theory.
Index entry
Max Planck is currently a short index entry. The research desk can draft the full profile — achievements, works, living legacy and what is documented about the family line.
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Continuity of ideas
Who shaped Max Planck, and who they shaped
Inherited from1
- James Clerk Maxwell
1831 – 1879 · Physics, Mathematics
Blackbody radiation is the classical electromagnetic problem whose failure forced the quantum.
Passed the work to2
- Albert Einstein
1879 – 1955 · Physics
The quantum of action becomes, in Einstein's hands, the light quantum of the photoelectric paper.
- Niels Bohr
1885 – 1962 · Physics
Bohr quantised the atom by importing Planck's constant into orbital angular momentum.
Sources and references
Numbered markers in the text above point to the entries below. Each links to a primary document, archival collection or scholarly reference where the claim about Max Planck can be checked.
- 1.Nobel Prize record — Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918
The Nobel Foundation · Primary source
- 2.Primary texts and first editions by or about Max Planck
Internet Archive · Primary source
- 3.Catalogued holdings and archival finding aids for Max Planck
WorldCat (OCLC) · Archive
Nearby in the annals
Ibn al-Haytham
965 – 1040Founded optics and the experimental method in the Book of Optics.
Hildegard of Bingen
1098 – 1179Abbess, composer, and author of the first known European medical texts by a woman.
Johannes Gutenberg
1400 – 1468Industrialised the word and detonated the modern world.