Max Planck

:This article is about Planck, the German physicist. For the proposed European Space Agency artificial satellite, see "Planck (satellite)".

Education

Planck was musically gifted: he took voice lessons in addition to playing the piano, organ and cello, and composing songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.

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The Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised him against going into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes." Planck replied that he didn't wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field and began his studies in 1874 in Munich. With Jolly, Planck performed the only experiment of his entire intellectual career (studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum), but soon transferred to theoretical physics.

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In 1877 he went to Berlin for a year of study with the famous physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and also the 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, however, dry and monotonous. Despite this he soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he mostly undertook a program of self-study of Clausius's writings, which led him to choose heat theory as his field.

Related Topics:
Berlin - Hermann von Helmholtz - Gustav Kirchhoff - Karl Weierstrass - Clausius's

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In October 1878 Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February of 1879 defended his dissertation, "Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie" (On the second fundamental theorem of the mechanical heat theory). In June 1880 he presented his habilitation thesis, "Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen" (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures).

Related Topics:
1878 - 1879 - 1880

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