Know the scientist: Max Planck

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, now known as Planck’s constant h.