Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

Chapter 29
Planck
29.1 Life and Work
Wikipedia:
• Max Planck (1858 1947) was a German physicist who is regarded as
the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize
in Physics in 1918.
• The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the
DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition, now known as the
Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in
quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of
an elementary unit E = hν, where h is Planck’s constant, also known
as Planck’s action quantum (introduced already in 1899), and ν is the
frequency of the radiation. Physicists now call these quanta photons,
and a photon of frequency will have its own specific and unique energy.
The amplitude of energy at that frequency is then a function of
the number of photons of that frequency being produced per unit of time.
• Subsequently, Planck tried to grasp the meaning of energy quanta, but to
no avail. “My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action
quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused
me much trouble.”
• Max Born wrote about Planck: “He was by nature and by the tradition
of his family conservative, averse to revolutionary novelties and
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