Max Planck (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.[1]
Planck is regarded as the originator of quantum theory, one of the fundamental achievements of twentieth-century physics.
The quantum of action
In 1900 he introduced the idea that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete packets, or quanta, resolving the ultraviolet catastrophe of black-body radiation and opening the quantum era.[2]
References
- Heilbron, J. (1986). The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck. University of California Press.
- Planck, M. (1901). "On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum." Annalen der Physik.
