Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (1858–1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose groundbreaking quantum theory helped establish modern physics. Planck received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Born in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein state, Planck was the son of a professor of law. He was educated at the universities of Munich and Berlin, where he got a PhD in 1879. Planck taught for a short time in Munich and Kiel before moving to Berlin in 1889 as a professor of physics—he held this post until retirement in 1926.
Planck made numerous contributions to theoretical physics. His early work was on the law of thermodynamics and blackbody radiation. When classical physics could not explain how a black body radiated energy, he theorized that the frequency distribution of blackbody radiation could only be caused by separate “packets” called quanta, rather than continuously. Quantum theory revolutionized the understanding of atomic and subatomic processes and led to industrial and military applications that affect every aspect of modern life.
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Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And it is because in the last analysis we ourselves are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.
—Max Planck
Topics: Science, Mystery
Science advances funeral by funeral.
—Max Planck
Topics: Innovation
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that it opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.
—Max Planck
Topics: Innovation
Anybody who has been seriously engaged is scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: ‘Ye must have faith.’ It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.
—Max Planck
Topics: Faith
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.
—Max Planck
Topics: Science, Truth
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