Planck Shatters Physics: Birth of Quantum Theory
Max Planck presented his derivation of the black-body radiation law to the German Physical Society in Berlin on December 14, 1900, introducing the concept that energy is emitted in discrete packets proportional to frequency. The equation E=hv, where h is Planck's constant (6.626 x 10^-34 joule-seconds), was the first quantization of a physical property. Planck himself was deeply conservative and called the quantum hypothesis 'an act of desperation' forced by the failure of classical physics to explain the ultraviolet catastrophe. He spent years trying to reconcile quanta with Newtonian mechanics. It was Einstein, not Planck, who took the idea seriously enough to apply it to the photoelectric effect in 1905. That work earned Einstein the Nobel Prize and launched quantum mechanics as a full theory. Planck received his own Nobel in 1918.
December 7, 1900
126 years ago
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