|
|
|
|
Wilhelm Wien
|
| |
|
| |
Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (German: ) (13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to compose Wien's displacement law, which relates the maximum emission of a blackbody to its temperature. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.
was born at Fischhausen (Rybaki), Province of Prussia (now Primorsk, Russia) as the son of landowner Carl Wien.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Wilhelm Wien' Start a new discussion about 'Wilhelm Wien' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (German: ) (13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to compose Wien's displacement law, which relates the maximum emission of a blackbody to its temperature. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.
Biography
Early years
Wien was born at Fischhausen (Rybaki), Province of Prussia (now Primorsk, Russia) as the son of landowner Carl Wien. In 1866, his family moved to Drachstein, in Rastenburg (Rastembork.
In 1879, Wien went to school in Rastenburg and from 1880-1882 he attended the city school of Heidelberg. In 1882 he attended the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin. From 1883-85, he worked in the laboratory of Hermann von Helmholtz and, in 1886, he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on the diffraction of light upon metals and on the influence of various materials upon the color of refracted light.
From 1896 to 1899, Wien lectured at the prestigious Aachen University of Technology.
In 1900 he went to the University Würzburg and became successor of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.
Career
In 1896 Wien emperically determined a distribution law of blackbody radiation, later named after him: Wien's law. Max Planck, who was a colleague of Wien's, did not believe in emperical laws, so using electromagentism and thermodynamics, he proposed a theoretical basis for Wein's law, which became the Wien-Planck law. However, Wien's law, was only valid at high frequencies, and underestimated the radiancy at low frequencies. Planck, corrected the theory, and proposed what is now called Planck's law, which led to the development of quantum theory. However, Wien's other emperical forumlation , called Wien's displacement law, is still very useful, as it relates the peak wavelength emitted by a body (λmax), to the temperature of the body (T). In 1900 (following the work of George Frederick Charles Searle), he assumed that the entire mass of matter is of electromagnetic origin and proposed the formula for the relation between electromagnetic mass and electromagnetic energy.
While studying streams of ionized gas, Wien, in 1898, identified a positive particle equal in mass to the hydrogen atom. Wien, with this work, laid the foundation of mass spectroscopy. J. J. Thomson refined Wien's apparatus and conducted further experiments in 1913 then, after work by Ernest Rutherford in 1919, Wien's particle was accepted and named the proton.
Bibliography
- Lehrbuch der Hydrodynamik (1900, physics)
- Aus dem Leben und Wirken eines Physikers (1930, memoir)
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
