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Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 physicist
Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
 who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy
Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy was originally the study of the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength . In fact, historically, spectroscopy referred to the use of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g....
, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862, and two sets of independent concepts in both circuit theory and thermal emission are named "Kirchhoff's laws
Kirchhoff's laws

There are several Kirchhoff's laws, all named after Gustav Robert Kirchhoff:* Kirchhoff's circuit laws* Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation...
" after him. The Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award
Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award

The Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award is a prize for "outstanding achievements" in the field of analytical spectroscopy. It has been awarded since 1990 by the German Working Group of Applied Spectroscopy, and is endowed with ?2500 by PerkinElmer, Germany....
 for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague, Robert Bunsen
Robert Bunsen

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a Germany chemist. He investigated electromagnetic spectroscopy of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff he discovered cesium and rubidium....
.

Life and work
Gustav Kirchhoff was born in Königsberg
Königsberg

K?nigsberg was after World War II in 1946 renamed Kaliningrad by the Soviet Union.The city was the Capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945....
, East Prussia
East Prussia

East Prussia refers to the main part of the Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Sea from the 13th century to 1945. From 1772?1829 and 1878?1945, the Province of East Prussia was a province of the Germany state of Prussia....
, the son of Friedrich Kirchhoff, a lawyer, and Johanna Henriette Wittke.






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Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 physicist
Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
 who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy
Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy was originally the study of the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength . In fact, historically, spectroscopy referred to the use of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g....
, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coined the term "black body" radiation in 1862, and two sets of independent concepts in both circuit theory and thermal emission are named "Kirchhoff's laws
Kirchhoff's laws

There are several Kirchhoff's laws, all named after Gustav Robert Kirchhoff:* Kirchhoff's circuit laws* Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation...
" after him. The Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award
Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award

The Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award is a prize for "outstanding achievements" in the field of analytical spectroscopy. It has been awarded since 1990 by the German Working Group of Applied Spectroscopy, and is endowed with ?2500 by PerkinElmer, Germany....
 for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague, Robert Bunsen
Robert Bunsen

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a Germany chemist. He investigated electromagnetic spectroscopy of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff he discovered cesium and rubidium....
.

Life and work


Gustav Kirchhoff was born in Königsberg
Königsberg

K?nigsberg was after World War II in 1946 renamed Kaliningrad by the Soviet Union.The city was the Capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945....
, East Prussia
East Prussia

East Prussia refers to the main part of the Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Sea from the 13th century to 1945. From 1772?1829 and 1878?1945, the Province of East Prussia was a province of the Germany state of Prussia....
, the son of Friedrich Kirchhoff, a lawyer, and Johanna Henriette Wittke. He graduated from the Albertus University of Königsberg
University of Königsberg

The University of K?nigsberg was the university of K?nigsberg, East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 by Albert, Duke of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....
 in 1847 where he attended the mathematico-physical seminar directed by Franz Ernst Neumann
Franz Ernst Neumann

Franz Ernst Neumann was a Germany mineralogist, physicist and mathematician....
 and Friedrich Julius Richelot
Friedrich Julius Richelot

Friedrich Julius Richelot was a Germany Mathematics, born in K?nigsberg. He was a student of Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. He promoted in 1831 at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of K?nigsberg with a dissertation on the division of the circle into 257 equal parts and was a professor there....
. He married Clara Richelot, the daughter of his mathematics professor Richelot. In the same year, they moved to Berlin
Berlin

Berlin is the Capital of Germany city and one of sixteen States of Germany of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is the country's largest city....
, where he stayed until he received a professorship at Breslau.

Kirchhoff formulated his circuit laws
Kirchhoff's circuit laws

Kirchhoff's circuit laws are two Equality that deal with the Charge conservation and energy in electrical circuits, and were first described in 1845 by Gustav Kirchhoff....
, which are now ubiquitous in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism....
, in 1845, while still a student. He completed this study as a seminar exercise; it later became his doctoral dissertation. He proposed his law of thermal radiation
Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation

In thermodynamics, Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation, or Kirchhoff's law for short, is a general statement equating emission and absorption in heated objects, proposed by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1859, following from general considerations of thermodynamic equilibrium....
 in 1859, and gave a proof in 1861. He was called to the University of Heidelberg in 1854, where he collaborated in spectroscopic work with Robert Bunsen. Together Kirchhoff and Bunsen discovered caesium
Caesium

Caesium or cesium is the chemical element with the symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal with a melting point of , which makes it one of only liquid metal that are liquid at or near room temperature....
 and rubidium
Rubidium

Rubidium is a chemical element with the symbol Rb and atomic number 37. Rb is a soft, silvery-white metallic element of the alkali metal group....
 in 1861. At Heidelberg
Heidelberg

Heidelberg is a city in Baden-W?rttemberg, Germany. As of 2006, over 140,000 people live within the city's area. The town of Heidelberg is an administrative district of its own....
 he ran a mathematico-physical seminar, modelled on Neumann's, with the mathematician Leo Koenigsberger. Among those who attended this seminar were Arthur Schuster
Arthur Schuster

Sir Franz Arthur Friedrich Schuster Royal Society was a versatile Germany-born United Kingdom physicist known for his work in spectroscopy, electrochemistry, optics, X-radiography and the application of harmonic analysis to physics....
 and Sofia Kovalevskaya
Sofia Kovalevskaya

Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya . , was the first major Russian female mathematician, and also the first woman who was appointed to a full professorship in Europe in 1889 ....
. In 1875 Kirchhoff accepted the first chair specifically dedicated to theoretical physics
Theoretical physics

Theoretical physics employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics in an attempt to explain experimental data taken of the natural world....
 at Berlin.

In 1862 he was awarded the Rumford Medal
Rumford Medal

The Rumford Medal is awarded by the Royal Society every alternating year for "an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties of matter made by a scientist working in Europe"....
 for his researches on the fixed lines of the solar spectrum, and on the inversion of the bright lines in the spectra of artificial light.

He contributed greatly to the field of spectroscopy by formalizing three laws that describe the spectral composition of light
Light

Light, or visible light, is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is Visible spectrum to the human eye , or up to 380?750 nm. In the broader field of physics, light is sometimes used to refer to electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, whether visible or not....
 emitted by incandescent objects, building substantially on the discoveries of David Alter
David Alter

David Alter was a prominent United States inventor and scientist of the 19th century. He was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania and graduated from the Reformed Medical School in New York City....
 and Anders Jonas Angstrom (see also: spectrum analysis
Spectrum analysis

Spectrum analysis also known as Emission Spectrochemical Analysis is the original scientific method of charting and analyzing the chemical properties of matter and gases by looking at the bands in their optical spectrum....
)

Kirchhoff died in 1887, and was buried in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg
Schöneberg

Sch?neberg is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau....
, Berlin.

Kirchhoff's three laws of spectroscopy:


  1. A hot solid object produces light with a continuous spectrum.
  2. A hot tenuous gas produces light with spectral line
    Spectral line

    A spectral line is a dark or bright line in an otherwise uniform and continuous optical spectrum, resulting from an excess or deficiency of photons in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies....
    s at discrete wavelength
    Wavelength

    In physics, wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a propagating wave of a given frequency. It is commonly designated by the Greek language letter lambda ....
    s (i.e. specific colors) which depend on the energy levels of the atoms in the gas. (See also: emission spectrum
    Emission spectrum

    The emission spectrum of an Chemical element or Chemical compound is the relative intensity of electromagnetic radiation of each frequency Emission by atoms or molecules of that element or compound when they are excited....
    )
  3. A hot solid object surrounded by a cool tenuous gas (i.e. cooler than the hot object) produces light with an almost continuous spectrum which has gaps at discrete wavelengths depending on the energy levels of the atoms in the gas. (See also: absorption spectrum
    Absorption spectrum

    A material's absorption spectrum shows the fraction of incident electromagnetic radiation absorption by the material over a range of frequencies....
    )


Kirchhoff did not know about the existence of energy levels in atoms. The existence of discrete spectral lines was later explained by the Bohr model
Bohr model

In atomic physics, the Bohr model created by Niels Bohr depicts the atom as a small, positively charged atomic nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in circular orbits around the nucleus—similar in structure to the solar system, but with electrostatic forces providing attraction, rather than gravity....
 of the atom, which helped lead to quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a set of principles underlying the most fundamental known description of all physical systems at the microscopic scale . Notable amongst these principles are both a dual wave-like and particle-like behavior of matter and radiation, and prediction of probabilities in situations where classical physics predicts certaintie...
.

See also


  • Kirchhoff's circuit laws
    Kirchhoff's circuit laws

    Kirchhoff's circuit laws are two Equality that deal with the Charge conservation and energy in electrical circuits, and were first described in 1845 by Gustav Kirchhoff....
  • Kirchhoff equations
    Kirchhoff equations

    The motion of a rigid body in an ideal fluid can be expressed in a basis fixed to the body by Kirchhoff's equations:where and are the angular and linear velocity vectors at the point , respectively; is the moment of inertia tensor, is the body's mass; is...
  • Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor
  • Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation
    Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation

    In thermodynamics, Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation, or Kirchhoff's law for short, is a general statement equating emission and absorption in heated objects, proposed by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1859, following from general considerations of thermodynamic equilibrium....
  • Kirchhoff Institute of Physics
  • Spectroscope
  • Kirchhoff's theorem
    Kirchhoff's theorem

    In the mathematics field of graph theory Kirchhoff's theorem or Kirchhoff's matrix tree theorem named after Gustav Kirchhoff is a theorem about the number of spanning tree s in a Graph ....


Further reading