When Downingtown West senior Richard Planck, the 2023 Daily Local News Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year, finished first in the Ches-Mont Championships in a photo finish this fall, he considered it his biggest victory to date.
Max Planck, the man who changed the course of Physics. | Photo Credit:
THE HINDU ARCHIVES
Planck’s concept of energy quanta is considered one of the scientific breakthroughs that most contributed to modern physics.
Max Planck (1858 - 1947) was a German theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918 for his work on the quantum theory, which revolutionised human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes.
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, to Julius Wilhelm and Emma Planck. Planck studied physics at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, and received his doctorate of philosophy at Munich in 1879 after completing his paper detailing his research and theory of thermodynamics, an interest he acquired from his studies under physicist Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, whom he greatly admired. His dissertation in the second law of thermodynamics laid the ground for his future researches, which eventually led him to discover the quantum of action