50 Fun Facts About Max Planck

For which year was Planck awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, 'for his discovery of energy quanta'?

He actually received the award in 1919, and told his son the discovery was comparable only to Newton's.

In which German city was Planck born in 1858?

His father taught law at the university there; the family moved to Munich when he was nine.

Planck was baptised with which given name, which he had swapped for 'Max' by the age of ten?

It was recorded as his 'appellation name', but he signed himself Max for the rest of his life.

Planck's father was a university professor of which subject?

His grandfather and great-grandfather had both been theology professors at Gottingen.

One of Planck's earliest memories was of Prussian and Austrian troops marching into his home town during which war?

He was six at the time; war was a constant background of his childhood.

At what age did Planck graduate early from his Munich gymnasium?

His maths teacher Hermann Muller had introduced him to the conservation of energy, his first contact with physics.

Which rare musical gift did Planck possess?

He played piano, organ and cello, and composed an opera, Die Liebe im Walde, as a student.

At Planck's weekly musical soirees in Berlin, a famous physicist friend played which instrument?

The renowned violinist Joseph Joachim was another regular; Planck himself was usually at the keyboard.

Why did Professor Philipp von Jolly advise the young Planck against theoretical physics?

Jolly thought the conservation of energy had all but finished the subject; Planck ignored him.

The only experiments of Planck's career studied hydrogen diffusing through heated what?

After that he switched to theory for good.

Self-study of Rudolf Clausius's writings in Berlin led Planck to choose which field?

His 1879 doctoral thesis was on the second law of the mechanical theory of heat.

Which of his Berlin teachers did Planck find 'never quite prepared' and endlessly miscalculating?

He nonetheless became close friends with him, and Helmholtz probably secured his Berlin chair.

In 1889 Planck was named successor to which physicist's position at the University of Berlin?

He became a full professor there by 1892 and stayed until retirement in 1926.

In 1907 Planck turned down the late Ludwig Boltzmann's chair in which city, preferring to stay in Berlin?

Two years later he was lecturing at Columbia University in New York.

Who succeeded Planck in his Berlin chair when he retired in January 1926?

Both men would later reject the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum theory Planck had started.

Planck recalled that when he first mentioned entropy in Berlin it was regarded as a mathematical what?

He was, he said, essentially the only theoretical physicist there.

Planck's initiative merged Germany's local physics societies in 1898 to form what?

He was its president from 1905 to 1909, and it later created the Max Planck Medal as its highest honour.

Which future co-discoverer of nuclear fission called Planck's lectures 'dry, somewhat impersonal'?

An English listener disagreed, calling him 'the best lecturer I ever heard', even as fainting students dropped to the floor of the overheated room.

Roughly how many graduate students did Planck have in his whole career?

He never founded a 'school'; those he did supervise included Max von Laue and Walther Bothe.

Which American scientist's thermodynamic formalism did Planck unknowingly rediscover?

Gibbs's essays did not appear in German until 1892; Planck's approach is credited with the greater universality.

Planck presented his quantum hypothesis to the physics society in Berlin on 14 December of which year?

The date is generally taken as the birth of quantum physics.

The Planck relation E = hv says the energy of a photon is proportional to what?

The constant of proportionality, h, is now used to define the kilogram.

Planck called energy quanta 'the pennies of the' what?

Radiant heat, he said, was not a continuous flow but 'a discontinuous mass, made up of units all of which are similar to one another'.

Planck later described his reluctant use of Boltzmann's statistical methods in 1900 as 'an act of' what?

'I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics,' he added.

Wien's radiation law matched experiment for blue and ultraviolet light but failed where?

The rival Rayleigh-Jeans law had the opposite problem, the so-called ultraviolet catastrophe.

The Planck constant is conventionally written with which letter?

Planck first introduced it in 1899 as the 'action quantum'.

Planck initially rejected which hypothesis, put forward to explain the photoelectric effect?

He would not give up Maxwell's electrodynamics, warning it would throw the theory of light back 'not by decades, but by centuries'.

Planck was among the few who immediately grasped the importance of which 1905 theory?

Thanks to his influence it was quickly accepted in Germany, and he recast it in terms of classical action.

Planck and Walther Nernst organised the First Solvay Conference in 1911 in which city?

It was there that he was finally convinced about the quantum nature of light.

As dean in Berlin, Planck created a 1914 professorship for which physicist, later a close friend and musical partner?

The two met frequently to play music together, and Einstein later called Planck a worshipper 'in the Temple of Science'.

In 1914 Planck signed the infamous 'Manifesto of the' how many intellectuals?

The war-propaganda pamphlet contrasted sharply with Einstein's pacifism.

With which chemist did Planck found the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft in 1920?

Much of the money it distributed was raised abroad; Planck later organised a provocative memorial for Haber after his death in exile.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Society, twice led by Planck, was renamed in his honour in which year?

By 2025 it comprised 83 institutions across the sciences.

Planck said a new scientific truth triumphs not by convincing opponents but because they eventually do what?

Historians note the quote is contradicted by his own case: his ideas were accepted quickly by his peers.

In May 1933 Planck met Hitler to argue against what?

Hitler replied that he had nothing against Jews, 'only against communists', which ended the discussion.

Which 'German Physics' champion attacked Planck, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg as 'white Jews'?

A Nazi science office then investigated Planck's ancestry and claimed he was one-sixteenth Jewish, which he denied.

Which physicist received the Max Planck Medal at Planck's 80th birthday celebration in 1938?

That same year the Prussian Academy lost its independence to the Nazis and Planck resigned its presidency in protest.

In his mid-eighties Planck was still fit enough to climb 3,000-metre peaks where?

He was also still travelling to give public talks such as 'Religion and Science'.

What did the February 1944 air raid that destroyed Planck's Berlin home also wipe out?

His correspondence went with them; he and his wife had already fled to the countryside.

Planck's son Erwin was hanged in January 1945 for his part in what?

The death of the son he was closest to destroyed much of Planck's will to live.

Erwin Planck was executed at which Berlin prison?

He had been sentenced to death by the People's Court in October 1944.

Planck died in October 1947 in which university town, where he is buried?

He, his second wife and their son had been brought there to a relative after the war.

Planck's first wife Marie died in 1909, possibly of what?

He remarried in 1911; his fifth child, Hermann, was born that December.

Planck's twin daughters Emma and Grete both died the same way. How?

Emma had married Grete's widower; both granddaughters survived and were named after their mothers.

Planck's eldest son Karl was killed in action in the First World War at which battle?

His other son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914.

Though a lifelong Lutheran, Planck said he did not believe in what?

The historian John Heilbron characterises his religious views as deistic.

Planck's turn to scientific realism led to a famous public rift in 1908 with which positivist?

The same belief in an objective universe later made him a critic of the Copenhagen interpretation.

From 1957 to 1971 Planck's portrait appeared on which West German coin?

A 10-euro silver coin followed for his 150th birthday in 2008.

In a 1918 talk with his son, Planck compared his quantum discovery to the discoveries of whom alone?

Max Born said he had 'nothing of the revolutionary' yet announced 'the most revolutionary idea which ever has shaken physics'.

Which of Planck's students, later famous for X-ray diffraction, took his doctorate under him in 1903?

Walther Bothe, Walter Schottky and the philosopher Moritz Schlick were also among his roughly 20 students.