PHYSICIST

Max Planck

1858 - 1947

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Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (; German: [maks ˈplaŋk] ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory and one of the founders of modern physics, which revolutionized understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. He is known for the Planck constant, which is of foundational importance for quantum physics, and which he used to derive a set of units, today called Planck units, expressed only in terms of fundamental physical constants. Planck was twice president of the German scientific institution Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Max Planck is the 10th most popular physicist (down from 7th in 2019), the 31st most popular biography from Germany (down from 26th in 2019) and the 3rd most popular German Physicist.

Max Planck is most famous for his work in quantum physics. He was able to show that light is not a continuous wave, but instead comes in packets of energy called quanta.

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Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Max Planck ranks 10 out of 851Before him are J. Robert Oppenheimer, Stephen Hawking, Wilhelm Röntgen, Michael Faraday, Niels Bohr, and Hans Christian Ørsted. After him are Alessandro Volta, Albert A. Michelson, Pierre Curie, André-Marie Ampère, Evangelista Torricelli, and Erwin Schrödinger.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1858, Max Planck ranks 2Before him is Giacomo Puccini. After him are Émile Durkheim, Selma Lagerlöf, Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, Theodore Roosevelt, Rudolf Diesel, Gustaf V of Sweden, Georg Simmel, Christiaan Eijkman, Jagadish Chandra Bose, and Omar Mukhtar. Among people deceased in 1947, Max Planck ranks 1After him are Aleister Crowley, Henry Ford, Al Capone, Christian X of Denmark, Rudolf Höss, Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, Philipp Lenard, Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, George II of Greece, Kurt Lewin, and Jozef Tiso.

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In Germany

Among people born in Germany, Max Planck ranks 31 out of 7,253Before him are Max Weber (1864), Wilhelm Röntgen (1845), Frederick the Great (1712), Johannes Brahms (1833), Friedrich Engels (1820), and Angela Merkel (1954). After him are Bernhard Riemann (1826), Anne Frank (1929), Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368), Hermann Hesse (1877), Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (912), and Martin Heidegger (1889).

Among PHYSICISTS In Germany

Among physicists born in Germany, Max Planck ranks 3Before him are Albert Einstein (1879), and Wilhelm Röntgen (1845). After him are Werner Heisenberg (1901), Georg Ohm (1789), Heinrich Hertz (1857), Max Born (1882), Max von Laue (1879), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821), Johannes Stark (1874), Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887), and Georg Bednorz (1950).