LOT Photos Estate Nobel Laureate Max Planck Granddaughter QUANTUM PHYSICS SCARCE (2023)

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Original Foto Nachlass von dem Nobelpreisträger Max Planck und seiner EnkeltochterGrete Marie Fehling

Diverse Fotos / Postkarten und 2 Fotoalben der Enkeltochter

Original photo estate of the Nobel Prize winner Max Planck and his granddaughter Grete Marie Fehling

Various photos / postcards and 2 photo albums of the granddaughter

Grete Marie Emma Cäcilie Roos (Fehling)

Birthdate:May 06, 1917

Birthplace:Heidelberg, Landkreis Karlsruhe, BW, Germany

Death:1981 (63-64)

Immediate Family:

Daughter of Ferdinand Fehling and Emma Ottilie Agnes Fehling

Wife of Ernst Johannes Roos

Emma Ottilie Agnes Fehling (Planck)

Birthdate:April 10, 1889

Birthplace:Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Death:May 15, 1917 (28)

Thomasstraße 15, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany (childbirth)

Immediate Family:

Daughter of Max K. E. L. Planck, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918 and Marie Planck (Merck)

Wife of Ferdinand Fehling

Mother of Grete Marie Emma Cäcilie Roos

Sister of Karl Planck and Erwin Gottlieb Adalbert Otto Planck

Half sister of Hermann Heinrich Wilhelm Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

Birthdate:April 23, 1858

Birthplace:Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Death:October 04, 1947 (89)

Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany

Place of Burial:Göttingen City Cemetery, Göttingen, Germany

Immediate Family:

Son of Johann Julius Wilhelm* von Planck and Emma Planck (Patzig)

Husband of Marie Planck (Merck) and Margarethe Marga von Hößlin

Father of Karl Planck; Emma Ottilie Agnes Fehling; Erwin Gottlieb Adalbert Otto Planck and Hermann Heinrich Wilhelm Planck

Brother of Adalbert Friedrich August Wilhelm Planck; Hildegard Brandis; Otto Planck and Hermann Planck

Half brother of Emma Schirmer and Hugo Wilhelm Sigmund Allwill Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck ForMemRS[1] (English: /ˈplæŋk/,[2] German: [maks ˈplaŋk] (listen);[3] 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.[4]

Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory,[5] which revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. In 1948, the German scientific institution Kaiser Wilhelm Society (of which Planck was twice president) was renamed Max Planck Society (MPG). The MPG now includes 83 institutions representing a wide range of scientific directions.

Life and career

Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen; his father was a law professor at the University of Kiel and Munich. One of his uncles was also a judge.[6]

Max Planck's signature at ten years of age

Planck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was baptized with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx (a now obsolete variant of Markus or maybe simply an error for Max, which is actually short for Maximilian) was indicated as the "appellation name".[7] However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and used this for the rest of his life.[8]

He was the sixth child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. War was common during Planck's early years and among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Second Schleswig War in 1864.[6] In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann Müller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17.[9] This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.

Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.

A side portrait of Planck as a young adult, c. 1878

The Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, "In this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes."[10] Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, but only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and so began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics.

In 1877, he went to the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly, and bored his listeners, while Kirchhoff spoke in carefully prepared lectures which were dry and monotonous. He soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Clausius's writings, which led him to choose thermodynamics as his field.

In October 1878, Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February 1879 defended his dissertation Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie (On the Second Law of Mechanical Heat Theory). He briefly taught mathematics and physics at his former school in Munich.

By the year 1880, Planck had obtained the two highest academic degrees offered in Europe. The first was a doctorate degree after he completed his paper detailing his research and theory of thermodynamics.[6] He then presented his thesis called Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures), which earned him a habilitation.

Academic career

With the completion of his habilitation thesis, Planck became an unpaid Privatdozent (German academic rank comparable to lecturer/assistant professor) in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work on the field of heat theory and discovered one after another the same thermodynamical formalism as Gibbs without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy occupied a central role in his work.

In April 1885, the University of Kiel appointed Planck as associate professor of theoretical physics. Further work on entropy and its treatment, especially as applied in physical chemistry, followed. He published his Treatise on Thermodynamics in 1897.[11] He proposed a thermodynamic basis for Svante Arrhenius's theory of electrolytic dissociation.

In 1889, he was named the successor to Kirchhoff's position at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin[12] – presumably thanks to Helmholtz's intercession – and by 1892 became a full professor. In 1907 Planck was offered Boltzmann's position in Vienna, but turned it down to stay in Berlin. During 1909, as a University of Berlin professor, he was invited to become the Ernest Kempton Adams Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at Columbia University in New York City. A series of his lectures were translated and co-published by Columbia University professor A. P. Wills.[13] He retired from Berlin on 10 January 1926,[14] and was succeeded by Erwin Schrödinger.[15]

Family

In March 1887, Planck married Marie Merck (1861–1909), sister of a school fellow, and moved with her into a sublet apartment in Kiel. They had four children: Karl (1888–1916), the twins Emma (1889–1919) and Grete (1889–1917), and Erwin (1893–1945).

After the apartment in Berlin, the Planck family lived in a villa in Berlin-Grunewald, Wangenheimstrasse 21. Several other professors from University of Berlin lived nearby, among them theologian Adolf von Harnack, who became a close friend of Planck. Soon the Planck home became a social and cultural center. Numerous well-known scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were frequent visitors. The tradition of jointly performing music had already been established in the home of Helmholtz.

After several happy years, in July 1909 Marie Planck died, possibly from tuberculosis. In March 1911 Planck married his second wife, Marga von Hoesslin (1882–1948); in December his fifth child Hermann was born.

During the First World War Planck's second son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914, while his oldest son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. Grete died in 1917 while giving birth to her first child. Her sister died the same way two years later, after having married Grete's widower. Both granddaughters survived and were named after their mothers. Planck endured these losses stoically.

In January 1945, Erwin, to whom he had been particularly close, was sentenced to death by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof because of his participation in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. Erwin was executed on 23 January 1945.[16]

Professor at Berlin University

As a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, Planck joined the local Physical Society. He later wrote about this time: "In those days I was essentially the only theoretical physicist there, whence things were not so easy for me, because I started mentioning entropy, but this was not quite fashionable, since it was regarded as a mathematical spook".[17] Thanks to his initiative, the various local Physical Societies of Germany merged in 1898 to form the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, DPG); from 1905 to 1909 Planck was the president.

Plaque at the Humboldt University of Berlin: "Max Planck, discoverer of the elementary quantum of action h, taught in this building from 1889 to 1928."

Planck started a six-semester course of lectures on theoretical physics, "dry, somewhat impersonal" according to Lise Meitner, "using no notes, never making mistakes, never faltering; the best lecturer I ever heard" according to an English participant, James R. Partington, who continues: "There were always many standing around the room. As the lecture-room was well heated and rather close, some of the listeners would from time to time drop to the floor, but this did not disturb the lecture." Planck did not establish an actual "school"; the number of his graduate students was only about 20, among them:

1897 Max Abraham (1875–1922)

1903 Max von Laue (1879–1960)

1904 Moritz Schlick (1882–1936)

1906 Walther Meissner (1882–1974)

1907 Fritz Reiche (1883–1960)

1912 Walter Schottky (1886–1976)

1914 Walther Bothe (1891–1957)[18]

Black-body radiation

In 1894, Planck turned his attention to the problem of black-body radiation. The problem had been stated by Kirchhoff in 1859: "how does the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body (a perfect absorber, also known as a cavity radiator) depend on the frequency of the radiation (i.e., the color of the light) and the temperature of the body?". The question had been explored experimentally, but no theoretical treatment agreed with experimental values (i.e., with experimentally observed evidence). Wilhelm Wien proposed Wien's law, which correctly predicted the behaviour at high frequencies, but failed at low frequencies. The Rayleigh–Jeans law, another approach to the problem, agreed with experimental results at low frequencies, but created what was later known as the "ultraviolet catastrophe" at high frequencies, as predicted by classical physics. However, contrary to many textbooks, this was not a motivation for Planck.[19]

Planck's first proposed solution to the problem in 1899 followed from what he called the "principle of elementary disorder", which allowed him to derive Wien's law from a number of assumptions about the entropy of an ideal oscillator, creating what was referred to as the Wien–Planck law. Soon, however, it was found that experimental evidence did not confirm the new law at all, to Planck's frustration. He revised his approach and now derived the first version of the famous Planck black-body radiation law, which described clearly the experimentally observed black-body spectrum. It was first proposed in a meeting of the DPG on 19 October 1900 and published in 1901. (This first derivation did not include energy quantisation, and did not use statistical mechanics, to which he held an aversion.) In November 1900 Planck revised this first version, now relying on Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics as a way of gaining a more fundamental understanding of the principles behind his radiation law. Planck was deeply suspicious of the philosophical and physical implications of such an interpretation of Boltzmann's approach; thus his recourse to them was, as he later put it, "an act of despair ... I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics".[19]

The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition, now known as the Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit:

ℎ

E=hu

where h is Planck's constant, also known as Planck's action quantum (introduced already in 1899), and ν is the frequency of the radiation. Note that the elementary units of energy discussed here are represented by hν and not simply by ν. Physicists now call these quanta photons, and a photon of frequency ν will have its own specific and unique energy. The total energy at that frequency is then equal to hν multiplied by the number of photons at that frequency.

Planck in 1918, the year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory

At first Planck considered that quantisation was only "a purely formal assumption ... actually I did not think much about it ..."; nowadays this assumption, incompatible with classical physics, is regarded as the birth of quantum physics and the greatest intellectual accomplishment of Planck's career. (Ludwig Boltzmann had been discussing in a theoretical paper in 1877 the possibility that the energy states of a physical system could be discrete). The discovery of Planck's constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants upon which much of quantum theory is based. In recognition of Planck's fundamental contribution to a new branch of physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1918; (he actually received the award in 1919).[20][21]

Subsequently, Planck tried to grasp the meaning of energy quanta, but to no avail. "My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused me much trouble." Even several years later, other physicists like Rayleigh, Jeans, and Lorentz set Planck's constant to zero in order to align with classical physics, but Planck knew well that this constant had a precise nonzero value. "I am unable to understand Jeans' stubbornness – he is an example of a theoretician as should never be existing, the same as Hegel was for philosophy. So much the worse for the facts if they don't fit."[22]

Max Born wrote about Planck: "He was, by nature, a conservative mind; he had nothing of the revolutionary and was thoroughly skeptical about speculations. Yet his belief in the compelling force of logical reasoning from facts was so strong that he did not flinch from announcing the most revolutionary idea which ever has shaken physics."[1]

Einstein and the theory of relativity

In 1905, the three epochal papers by Albert Einstein were published in the journal Annalen der Physik. Planck was among the few who immediately recognized the significance of the special theory of relativity. Thanks to his influence, this theory was soon widely accepted in Germany. Planck also contributed considerably to extend the special theory of relativity. For example, he recast the theory in terms of classical action.[23]

Einstein's hypothesis of light quanta (photons), based on Heinrich Hertz's 1887 discovery (and further investigation by Philipp Lenard) of the photoelectric effect, was initially rejected by Planck. He was unwilling to discard completely Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics. "The theory of light would be thrown back not by decades, but by centuries, into the age when Christiaan Huygens dared to fight against the mighty emission theory of Isaac Newton ..."[24]

In 1910, Einstein pointed out the anomalous behavior of specific heat at low temperatures as another example of a phenomenon which defies explanation by classical physics. Planck and Nernst, seeking to clarify the increasing number of contradictions, organized the First Solvay Conference (Brussels 1911). At this meeting Einstein was able to convince Planck.

Meanwhile, Planck had been appointed dean of Berlin University, whereby it was possible for him to call Einstein to Berlin and establish a new professorship for him (1914). Soon the two scientists became close friends and met frequently to play music together.

First World War

Max Planck's marble bust at the Deutsches Museum in Munich

At the onset of the First World War Planck endorsed the general excitement of the public, writing that, "Besides much that is horrible, there is also much that is unexpectedly great and beautiful: the smooth solution of the most difficult domestic political problems by the unification of all parties (and) ... the extolling of everything good and noble."[25][26] Planck also signed the infamous "Manifesto of the 93 intellectuals", a pamphlet of polemic war propaganda (while Einstein retained a strictly pacifistic attitude which almost led to his imprisonment, only being spared thanks to his Swiss citizenship).

In 1915, when Italy was still a neutral power, Planck voted successfully for a scientific paper from Italy, which received a prize from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where Planck was one of four permanent presidents.

Post-war and the Weimar Republic

In the turbulent post-war years, Planck, now the highest authority of German physics, issued the slogan "persevere and continue working" to his colleagues.

In October 1920, he and Fritz Haber established the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Organization of German Science), aimed at providing financial support for scientific research. A considerable portion of the money the organization would distribute was raised abroad.

Planck also held leading positions at Berlin University, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the German Physical Society and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (which became the Max Planck Society in 1948). During this time economic conditions in Germany were such that he was hardly able to conduct research. In 1926, Planck became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[27]

During the interwar period, Planck became a member of the Deutsche Volks-Partei (German People's Party), the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann, which aspired to liberal aims for domestic policy and rather revisionistic aims for politics around the world.

Planck disagreed with the introduction of universal suffrage and later expressed the view that the Nazi dictatorship resulted from "the ascent of the rule of the crowds".[28]

Quantum mechanics

From left to right: W. Nernst, A. Einstein, Planck, R.A. Millikan and von Laue at a dinner given by von Laue in Berlin on 11 November 1931

At the end of the 1920s, Bohr, Heisenberg and Pauli had worked out the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it was rejected by Planck, and by Schrödinger, Laue, and Einstein as well. Planck expected that wave mechanics would soon render quantum theory – his own child – unnecessary. This was not to be the case, however. Further work only served to underscore the enduring central importance of quantum theory, even against his and Einstein's philosophical revulsions. Here Planck experienced the truth of his own earlier observation from his struggle with the older views during his younger years: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."[29]

Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Planck was 74 years old. He witnessed many Jewish friends and colleagues expelled from their positions and humiliated, and hundreds of scientists emigrate from Nazi Germany. Again he tried to "persevere and continue working" and asked scientists who were considering emigration to remain in Germany. Nevertheless, he did help his nephew, the economist Hermann Kranold, to emigrate to London after his arrest.[30] He hoped the crisis would abate soon and the political situation would improve.

Otto Hahn asked Planck to gather well-known German professors in order to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, but Planck replied, "If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the positions of the others."[31] Under Planck's leadership, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG) avoided open conflict with the Nazi regime, except concerning the Jewish Fritz Haber. Planck tried to discuss the issue with the recently appointed Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler, but was unsuccessful, as to Hitler "the Jews are all Communists, and these are my enemies." In the following year, 1934, Haber died in exile.[32]

One year later, Planck, having been the president of the KWG since 1930, organized in a somewhat provocative style an official commemorative meeting for Haber. He also succeeded in secretly enabling a number of Jewish scientists to continue working in institutes of the KWG for several years. In 1936, his term as president of the KWG ended, and the Nazi government pressured him to refrain from seeking another term.

As the political climate in Germany gradually became more hostile, Johannes Stark, prominent exponent of Deutsche Physik ("German Physics", also called "Aryan Physics") attacked Planck, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg for continuing to teach the theories of Einstein, calling them "white Jews". The "Hauptamt Wissenschaft" (Nazi government office for science) started an investigation of Planck's ancestry, claiming that he was "1/16 Jewish", but Planck himself denied it.[33]

Planck's grave in Göttingen

In 1938, Planck celebrated his 80th birthday. The DPG held a celebration, during which the Max-Planck medal (founded as the highest medal by the DPG in 1928) was awarded to French physicist Louis de Broglie. At the end of 1938, the Prussian Academy lost its remaining independence and was taken over by Nazis (Gleichschaltung). Planck protested by resigning his presidency. He continued to travel frequently, giving numerous public talks, such as his talk on Religion and Science, and five years later he was sufficiently fit to climb 3,000-metre peaks in the Alps.

During the Second World War the increasing number of Allied bombing missions against Berlin forced Planck and his wife to temporarily leave the city and live in the countryside. In 1942, he wrote: "In me an ardent desire has grown to persevere this crisis and live long enough to be able to witness the turning point, the beginning of a new rise." In February 1944, his home in Berlin was completely destroyed by an air raid, annihilating all his scientific records and correspondence. His rural retreat was threatened by the rapid advance of the Allied armies from both sides.

In 1944, Planck's son Erwin was arrested by the Gestapo following the attempted assassination of Hitler in the 20 July plot. He was tried and sentenced to death by the People's Court in October 1944. Erwin was hanged at Berlin's Plötzensee Prison in January 1945. The death of his son destroyed much of Planck's will to live.[34] After the war had ended, Planck, his second wife, and their son were brought to a relative in Göttingen, where Planck died on October 4, 1947. His grave is situated in the old Stadtfriedhof (City Cemetery) in Göttingen.[35]

Religious views

Planck was a member of the Lutheran Church in Germany.[36] He was very tolerant towards alternative views and religions.[37] In a lecture in 1937 entitled "Religion und Naturwissenschaft" ("Religion and Natural Science") he suggested the importance of these symbols and rituals related directly with a believer's ability to worship God, but that one must be mindful that the symbols provide an imperfect illustration of divinity. He criticized atheism for being focused on the derision of such symbols, while at the same time warned of the over-estimation of the importance of such symbols by believers.[38]

Planck was tolerant and favorable to all religions. Although he remained in the Lutheran Church, he did not promote Christian or Biblical views. He believed "the faith in miracles must yield, step by step, before the steady and firm advance of the facts of science, and its total defeat is undoubtedly a matter of time."[39]

In "Religion und Naturwissenschaft", Planck expressed the view that God is everywhere present, and held that "the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead is conveyed by the holiness of symbols." Atheists, he thought, attach too much importance to what are merely symbols. He was a churchwarden from 1920 until his death, and believed in an almighty, all-knowing, beneficent God (though not necessarily a personal one). Both science and religion wage a "tireless battle against skepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition" with the goal "toward God!"[39]

Planck said in 1944, "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent spirit [orig. geist]. This spirit is the matrix of all matter."[40]

Planck argued that the concept of God is important to both religion and science, but in different ways: "Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations … To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view".[41]

Furthermore, Planck wrote,

..."to believe" means "to recognize as a truth," and the knowledge of nature, continually advancing on incontestably safe tracks, has made it utterly impossible for a person possessing some training in natural science to recognize as founded on truth the many reports of extraordinary occurrences contradicting the laws of nature, of miracles which are still commonly regarded as essential supports and confirmations of religious doctrines, and which formerly used to be accepted as facts pure and simple, without doubt or criticism. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely.[42]

Noted historian of science John L. Heilbron characterized Planck's views on God as deistic.[43] Heilbron further relates that when asked about his religious affiliation, Planck replied that although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe "in a personal God, let alone a Christian God."[44]

Publications

Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung, 1906

Planck, M. (1900a). "Über eine Verbesserung der Wienschen Spektralgleichung". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 2: 202–204. Translated in ter Haar, D. (1967). "On an Improvement of Wien's Equation for the Spectrum" (PDF). The Old Quantum Theory. Pergamon Press. pp. 79–81. LCCN 66029628.

Planck, M. (1900b). "Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 2: 237. Translated in ter Haar, D. (1967). "On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum" (PDF). The Old Quantum Theory. Pergamon Press. p. 82. LCCN 66029628.

Planck, M. (1900c). "Entropie und Temperatur strahlender Wärme" [Entropy and Temperature of Radiant Heat]. Annalen der Physik. 306 (4): 719–737. Bibcode:1900AnP...306..719P. doi:10.1002/andp.19003060410.

Planck, M. (1900d). "Über irreversible Strahlungsvorgänge" [On Irreversible Radiation Processes]. Annalen der Physik. 306 (1): 69–122. Bibcode:1900AnP...306...69P. doi:10.1002/andp.19003060105.

Planck, M. (1901). "Ueber das Gesetz der Energieverteilung im Normalspektrum". Annalen der Physik. 309 (3): 553–563. Bibcode:1901AnP...309..553P. doi:10.1002/andp.19013090310. Translated in Ando, K. "On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 October 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2011.

Planck, M. (1903). Treatise on Thermodynamics. Ogg, A. (transl.). London: Longmans, Green & Co. OL 7246691M.

Planck, M. (1906). Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung. Leipzig: J.A. Barth. LCCN 07004527.

Planck, M. (1914). The Theory of Heat Radiation. Masius, M. (transl.) (2nd ed.). P. Blakiston's Son & Co. OL 7154661M.

Planck, M. (1915). Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics. Wills, A. P. (transl.). Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-69730-4.

Planck, M. (1908). Prinzip der Erhaltung der Energie. Leipzig.

Planck, M. (1943). "Zur Geschichte der Auffindung des physikalischen Wirkungsquantums". Naturwissenschaften. 31 (14–15): 153–159. Bibcode:1943NW.....31..153P. doi:10.1007/BF01475738. S2CID 44899488.

Almost half a century has elapsed since Max Planck’s discovery of the quantum of action, a time sufficiently long to estimate its importance for science and, more generally, for the development of human thought. There is no doubt that it was an event of the first order, comparable with the scientific revolutions brought about by Galileo and Newton, Faraday and Maxwell. Like these it has changed the whole aspect of physics and deeply influenced all neighbouring sciences, from chemistry to biology. Its philosophical implications reach far beyond the epistemology of science itself into the deepest roots of metaphysics. What kind of man was he who initiated this great movement? Apart from his numerous works, papers and books, we have a short Scientific Autobiography which is a great help in the understanding of his motives and his reactions. There are, furthermore, a series of articles published in Naturwissenschaften on the occasion of Planck’s sixtieth birthday, amongst them an excellent biographical one by Sommerfeld. All this valuable material will be used and quoted in the following attempt to give a picture of Planck’s personality. Yet my best help must be the memory of years of personal contact and friendship, which have left an unforgettable impression.

ACCORDING to the standard story,

which is unfortunately still found in

many physics textbooks, quantum theory emerged when it was realized that

classical physics predicts an energy distribution for black-body radiation that

disagrees violently with that found experimentally. In the late 1890s, so the

story continues, the German physicist

Wilhelm Wien developed an expression

that corresponded reasonably well with

experiment — but had no theoretical

foundation. When Lord Rayleigh and

James Jeans then analysed black-body

radiation from the perspective of classical physics, the resulting spectrum differed drastically from both experiment

and the Wien law. Faced with this grave

anomaly, Max Planck looked for a solution, during the course of which he

was forced to introduce the notion of

"energy quanta". With the quantum

hypothesis, a perfect match between the- credited for being the first person t0 reaNze that the

ory and experiment was obtained. Voila!

Quantum theory was born.

The story is a myth, closer to a fairytale than to historical truth. Quantum

theory did not owe its origin to any failure of classical physics, but instead to

Planck's profound insight in thermodynamics.

The enigmatic entropy

Quantum uncertainty- Max Planck is widely

energy of a body is "quantized", but history shows

that this is probably not what he had in mind at the

time. Indeed, the "discovery" of quantum theory

should not be seen as a moment of insight in

December 1900, but as an extended process by

many physicists.

| damental problem was the relationship

* between mechanics and electrodynam-

"'. ics, or between matter and the hypothetical ether. Could the laws of mechanics

.; be reduced to electrodynamics?

I Specialists in thermodynamics, meanwhile, focused on the relationship between the laws of mechanics and the

two basic laws of heat - the principle of

energy conservation and the second law

of thermodynamics. This discussion

looked at the status of statistical-molecular physics and therefore examined the

fundamental question of whether all

matter is composed of atoms. Although

the two discussions had much in common, it was die latter in particular from

which quantum theory emerged.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was

deeply interested in - even obsessed

with — the second law of thermodynamics. According to this law (in one of its

many versions), no process is possible in

which the only result is the transfer of

heat from a colder to a hotter body. With

the help of the concept of entropy, introduced by Rudolf Clausius in 1865,

the law can be reformulated to state that

the entropy of an isolated system always

increases or remains constant.

Born in 1858 as the son of a professor of jurisprudence,

Planck was appointed professor of physics at the University of

During the final years of the 19th century, many physicists Berlin in 1889. His doctoral dissertation from the University

found themselves discussing the validity of the mechanical of Munich dealt with the second law, which was also the subworld view, which until then had been taken for granted. The ject of most of his work until about 1905. Planck's thoughts

question at the heart of the debate was whether time-hon- centred on the concept of entropy and how to understand

oured Newtonian mechanics could still be held as the valid "irreversibility" on the basis of the absolute validity of the

description of all of nature. entropy law — the version of the second law of thermodyIn these discussions, which probed the very foundations of namics formulated in terms of the entropy concept,

physics, electrodynamics and thermodynamics occupied centre In the 1890s the debate about the second law centred on die

stage. As far as the electrodynamicists were concerned, the fun- statistical (or probabilistic) interpretation that Ludwig BoltzPHVSICS WORLD DECEMBER 2000

mann had originally proposed back in

1872 and expanded in 1877. According

to Boltzmann's molecular-mechanical

interpretation, the entropy of a system is

the collective result of molecular motions. The second law is valid only in

a statistical sense. Boltzmann's theory,

which presupposed the existence of

atoms and molecules, was challenged

by Wilhelm Ostwald and other "energeticists", who wanted to free physics

from the notion of atoms and base it

on energy and related quantities.

What was Planck's position in this

debate? One might expect that he sided

with the winners, or those who soon

turned out to be the winners - namely

Boltzmann and the "atomists". But this

was not the case. Planck's belief in the

absolute validity of the second law

made him not only reject Boltzmann's

statistical version of thermodynamics

but also doubt the atomic hypothesis on

which it rested. As early as 1882, Planck

concluded that the atomic conception

of matter was irreconcilably opposed to the law of entropy

increase. "There will be a fight between these two hypotheses

that will cause the life of one of them," he predicted. As to

the outcome of the fight, he wrote that "in spite of the great

successes of the atomistic theory in the past, we will finally

have to give it up and to decide in favour of the assumption

of continuous matter".

However, Planck's opposition to atomism waned during the

1890s as he realized the power of the hypothesis and the unification it brought to a variety of physical and chemical phenomena. All the same, his attitude to atomism remained

ambiguous and he continued to give priority to macroscopic

thermodynamics and ignore Boltzmann's statistical theory.

Indeed, by 1895 he was ready to embark on a major research

programme to determine thermodynamic irreversibility in

terms of some micro-mechanical or micro-electrodynamical

model that did not explicitly involve the atomic hypothesis.

The programme not only expressed Planck's deep interest in

the concept of entropy, but also displayed his "aristocratic"

attitude to physics: he focused on the fundamental aspects

and disregarded more mundane, applied ideas. His fascinPlanck rejected the statistical interpretation of the

second law of thermodynamics developed by

Ludwig Boltzmann (above) and tried, mistakenly, to

justify irreversibility in terms of electrodynamics

Electrodynamics, Boltzmann showed,

provides no more an "arrow of time"

than mechanics. Planck had to find

another way of justifying irreversibility.

The study of black-body radiation

had begun in 1859, when Robert Kirchhoff, Planck's predecessor as professor

of physics in Berlin, argued that such

radiation was of a fundamental nature.

By the 1890s several physicists - experimentalists and theorists — were investigating the spectral distribution of the

radiation. Important progress was made

in 1896 when Wien found a radiation

law that was in convincing agreement

with the precise measurements beingperformed at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin.

According to Wien, the spectral density, u, - the radiation energy density per

unit frequency - depended on the frequency, V, and temperature, T, according

to the formula «(v, T) = av3

exp((3v/ T)-]

More From Britannica

history of science: Newton

Interest in religion and theology

Newton found time now to explore other interests, such as religion and theology. In the early 1690s he had sent Locke a copy of a manuscript attempting to prove that Trinitarian passages in the Bible were latter-day corruptions of the original text. When Locke made moves to publish it, Newton withdrew in fear that his anti-Trinitarian views would become known. In his later years, he devoted much time to the interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel and St. John, and to a closely related study of ancient chronology. Both works were published after his death.

Leader of English science

Isaac Newton

In London, Newton assumed the role of patriarch of English science. In 1703 he was elected President of the Royal Society. Four years earlier, the French Académie des Sciences (Academy of Sciences) had named him one of eight foreign associates. In 1705 Queen Anne knighted him, the first occasion on which a scientist was so honoured. Newton ruled the Royal Society magisterially. John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, had occasion to feel that he ruled it tyrannically. In his years at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, Flamsteed, who was a difficult man in his own right, had collected an unrivalled body of data. Newton had received needed information from him for the Principia, and in the 1690s, as he worked on the lunar theory, he again required Flamsteed’s data. Annoyed when he could not get all the information he wanted as quickly as he wanted it, Newton assumed a domineering and condescending attitude toward Flamsteed. As president of the Royal Society, he used his influence with the government to be named as chairman of a body of “visitors” responsible for the Royal Observatory; then he tried to force the immediate publication of Flamsteed’s catalog of stars. The disgraceful episode continued for nearly 10 years. Newton would brook no objections. He broke agreements that he had made with Flamsteed. Flamsteed’s observations, the fruit of a lifetime of work, were, in effect, seized despite his protests and prepared for the press by his mortal enemy, Edmond Halley. Flamsteed finally won his point and by court order had the printed catalog returned to him before it was generally distributed. He burned the printed sheets, and his assistants brought out an authorized version after his death. In this respect, and at considerable cost to himself, Flamsteed was one of the few men to best Newton. Newton sought his revenge by systematically eliminating references to Flamsteed’s help in later editions of the Principia.

Isaac Newton

In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German philosopher and mathematician, Newton met a contestant more of his own calibre. It is now well established that Newton developed the calculus before Leibniz seriously pursued mathematics. It is almost universally agreed that Leibniz later arrived at the calculus independently. There has never been any question that Newton did not publish his method of fluxions; thus, it was Leibniz’s paper in 1684 that first made the calculus a matter of public knowledge. In the Principia Newton hinted at his method, but he did not really publish it until he appended two papers to the Opticks in 1704. By then the priority controversy was already smouldering. If, indeed, it mattered, it would be impossible finally to assess responsibility for the ensuing fracas. What began as mild innuendoes rapidly escalated into blunt charges of plagiarism on both sides. Egged on by followers anxious to win a reputation under his auspices, Newton allowed himself to be drawn into the centre of the fray; and, once his temper was aroused by accusations of dishonesty, his anger was beyond constraint. Leibniz’s conduct of the controversy was not pleasant, and yet it paled beside that of Newton. Although he never appeared in public, Newton wrote most of the pieces that appeared in his defense, publishing them under the names of his young men, who never demurred. As president of the Royal Society, he appointed an “impartial” committee to investigate the issue, secretly wrote the report officially published by the society, and reviewed it anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions. Even Leibniz’s death could not allay Newton’s wrath, and he continued to pursue the enemy beyond the grave. The battle with Leibniz, the irrepressible need to efface the charge of dishonesty, dominated the final 25 years of Newton’s life. It obtruded itself continually upon his consciousness. Almost any paper on any subject from those years is apt to be interrupted by a furious paragraph against the German philosopher, as he honed the instruments of his fury ever more keenly. In the end, only Newton’s death ended his wrath.

Final years of Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

During his final years Newton brought out further editions of his central works. After the first edition of the Opticks in 1704, which merely published work done 30 years before, he published a Latin edition in 1706 and a second English edition in 1717–18. In both, the central text was scarcely touched, but he did expand the “Queries” at the end into the final statement of his speculations on the nature of the universe. The second edition of the Principia, edited by Roger Cotes in 1713, introduced extensive alterations. A third edition, edited by Henry Pemberton in 1726, added little more. Until nearly the end, Newton presided at the Royal Society (frequently dozing through the meetings) and supervised the mint. During his last years, his niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt, and her husband lived with him.

ax Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 23, 1858, the son of Julius Wilhelm and Emma (née Patzig) Planck. His father was Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Kiel, and later in Göttingen.

Planck studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin, where his teachers included Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, and received his doctorate of philosophy at Munich in 1879. He was Privatdozent in Munich from 1880 to 1885, then Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at Kiel until 1889, in which year he succeeded Kirchhoff as Professor at Berlin University, where he remained until his retirement in 1926. Afterwards he became President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science, a post he held until 1937. The Prussian Academy of Sciences appointed him a member in 1894 and Permanent Secretary in 1912.

Planck’s earliest work was on the subject of thermodynamics, an interest he acquired from his studies under Kirchhoff, whom he greatly admired, and very considerably from reading R. Clausius’ publications. He published papers on entropy, on thermoelectric ity and on the theory of dilute solutions.

At the same time also the problems of radiation processes engaged his attention and he showed that these were to be considered as electromagnetic in nature. From these studies he was led to the problem of the distribution of energy in the spectrum of full radiation. Experimental observations on the wavelength distribution of the energy emitted by a black body as a function of temperature were at variance with the predictions of classical physics. Planck was able to deduce the relationship between the ener gy and the frequency of radiation. In a paper published in 1900, he announced his derivation of the relationship: this was based on the revolutionary idea that the energy emitted by a resonator could only take on discrete values or quanta. The energy for a resonator of frequency v is hv where h is a universal constant, now called Planck’s constant.

This was not only Planck’s most important work but also marked a turning point in the history of physics. The importance of the discovery, with its far-reaching effect on classical physics, was not appreciated at first. However the evidence for its validi ty gradually became overwhelming as its application accounted for many discrepancies between observed phenomena and classical theory. Among these applications and developments may be mentioned Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Planck’s work on the quantum theory, as it came to be known, was published in the Annalen der Physik. His work is summarized in two books Thermodynamik (Thermodynamics) (1897) and Theorie der Wärmestrahlung (Theory of heat radiat ion) (1906).

He was elected to Foreign Membership of the Royal Society in 1926, being awarded the Society’s Copley Medal in 1928.

Planck faced a troubled and tragic period in his life during the period of the Nazi government in Germany, when he felt it his duty to remain in his country but was openly opposed to some of the Government’s policies, particularly as regards the persecuti on of the Jews. In the last weeks of the war he suffered great hardship after his home was destroyed by bombing.

He was revered by his colleagues not only for the importance of his discoveries but for his great personal qualities. He was also a gifted pianist and is said to have at one time considered music as a career.

Planck was twice married. Upon his appointment, in 1885, to Associate Professor in his native town Kiel he married a friend of his childhood, Marie Merck, who died in 1909. He remarried her cousin Marga von Hösslin. Three of his children died young, leaving him with two sons.

He suffered a personal tragedy when one of them was executed for his part in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

He died at Göttingen on October 4, 1947.

Max Planck changed physics and our understanding of the world forever when he discovered that hot objects do not radiate a smooth, continuous range of energies as had been assumed in classical physics. Instead, he found that the energies radiated by hot objects have distinct values, with all other values forofferden. This discovery was the beginning of quantum theory – an entirely new type of physics – which replaced classical physics for atomic scale events.

Quantum theory revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity revolutionized our understanding of gravity, space, and time. Together these theories constitute the most spectacular breakthroughs of twentieth-century physics.

Of high intelligence, showing brilliance in mathematics, science, and music, Planck was a deeply thoughtful, ethical man. He experienced a long life, living almost 90 years. In his later years he lived in Germany through the great depression and both world wars, suffering a succession of personal tragedies.

Beginnings

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, on the north coast of Germany, on April 23, 1858. He had five older siblings.

His father, Johann Planck, was a law professor who came from an academic family. Max’s mother’s name was Emma Patzig. Her father was an accountant. Emma was lively and well-liked in the academic circles Max’s family moved in.

Max attended elementary school in Kiel. In 1867, when he was 9 years old, his family relocated over 500 miles to Munich in southern Germany, where his father had been offered a tempting professorship.

Max enrolled at the Maximilians Gymnasium – a school for academically able children. One of his teachers, the mathematician Hermann Müller, noticed Max was rather gifted mathematically, so he offered him extra lessons in astronomy and mechanics. Max accepted the offer enthusiastically, and Müller taught his receptive young student how to visualize the laws of physics in his mind – a vital weapon in the armory of the great physicists.

Frequently it happens that students who are talented mathematically are also talented musically, and this was the case with Max Planck, who composed classical music, had perfect pitch, and played the cello and piano expertly. As if that were not enough, he also had a beautiful singing voice.

Before he left high school, Planck decided he would pursue science as a vocation while music would remain an enjoyable hobby. He would later recall why he chose to become a man of science:

“as a direct result of the discovery that pure reasoning can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the world about us.”

University and a Ph.D. at age 21

In 1874, age 17, and now a freshman at the University of Munich, Planck spoke to Professor Philipp von Jolly about the merits physics. Jolly famously replied:

Philipp von Jolly“In this field [physics] almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few insignificant gaps.”

PHILIPP VON JOLLY, PHYSICIST

1874

Undeterred, Planck chose to study physics. One day he was destined to find evidence to prove the absurdity of his professor’s beliefs. In fairness to Philipp von Jolly – and although it’s hard to believe today given the rapid march of science and technology – many physicists of that era shared Jolly’s view: they believed they had already discovered and understood most of what there was in the universe to be discovered and understood!

At university Planck discovered he did not enjoy experimental work. His mathematical talent found its natural home in the world of theoretical physics.

He continued to enjoy music. He sang in the university choir and composed a mini-opera.

An Important Vacation

During the spring vacation of 1877, close to his twentieth birthday, Planck embarked on a hiking tour in northern Italy with university friends including the mathematician Carl Runge. While walking, the students discussed science, mathematics, and their views of the world.

Lake Come

Lake Como in northern Italy, one of the places Max Planck and his friends walked. Hiking amid spectacular scenery became one of Planck’s lifelong pleasures.

Runge raised a question about whether Christianity and religion did more harm than good – a question that shocked Planck, who had received a traditional Lutheran upbringing. Planck began to question his personal view of the world. He remained a Lutheran throughout his life and rejected atheism, but became very tolerant of alternative philosophies and religions.

Berlin and Thermodynamics

In the winter semester of 1877, age 20, Planck transferred for a year to Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelms University where he was taught by two of the giants of physics – Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff.

In Planck’s opinion, each of these renowned men of science delivered lectures distinguished only by their dreariness.

Nevertheless, he and Helmholtz became great friends. Planck admired – indeed almost worshiped – Helmoltz for his scientific integrity, honesty, kindness, modesty, and tolerance.

One of Helmholtz’s passions in physics was thermodynamics – the study of the relationships between temperature, heat, energy, and work. Planck grew increasingly fascinated by thermodynamic theory.

He began his own program of work in the field, spending endless hours poring over papers written by Rudolf Clausius, one of thermodynamics’ founders.

Unlike the lectures he attended, he found Clausius’s work to be interesting, well-delivered, and clear.

The Highest Honors and a First Job

After his year in Berlin, Planck returned to Munich in late 1878 where he passed his state exam allowing him to teach physics in high schools.

A few months later, in February 1879, he submitted a doctoral thesis concerning the second law of thermodynamics. Three months later he defended his thesis in an oral examination and – age 21 – was awarded a Ph.D. in physics with the highest honors – summa cum laude.

Funnily enough, from the questions he was asked during his thesis defense, Planck drew the conclusion that none of the professors who interrogated him understood his thesis!

A year later Planck successfully submitted a further thermodynamics thesis for his habilitation – a much more demanding qualification than the Ph.D., which allowed its holder to become a professor if such a job became available.

At age 22, Planck became a physics lecturer (unpaid) at the University of Munich. Without any salary, he continued living with his parents. His research focused on entropy – a quantity sometimes defined in a loose sense as a measure of the amount of disorder at the atomic level.

A Return to his Birthplace, then back to Berlin

Finally, almost on his 27th birthday, Planck became an associate professor of theoretical physics at the University of Kiel, where he probed ever more deeply into thermodynamics. He continued making progress in this difficult field, but made no major breakthroughs.

At age 31, in April 1889, Planck returned to Berlin to take over the lecturing duties of Gustav Kirchhoff, who had died in the fall of 1887.

In 1892 Planck became a full professor of theoretical physics. By all accounts his students found his lectures much more interesting than Planck had found his predecessor’s. One of his students, the British chemist James Partington, described Planck’s lectures:

“using no notes, never making mistakes, never faltering; the best lecturer I ever heard. There were always many standing around the room. As the lecture-room was well heated and rather close, some of the listeners would from time to time drop to the floor, but this did not disturb the lecture”.

Two of Planck’s Ph.D. students would later win Nobel Prizes in physics: Max von Laue and Walther Bothe.

The scene was now set for Planck’s momentous discovery – quantum theory.

Max Planck’s Contributions to Science

Most theoretical physicists make their mark when they are young. Max Planck was 42 when he finally left an indelible mark on the world.

The problem he solved in 1900 was prompted by puzzlement over the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by hot objects.

Classical Physics Disagrees with Reality

When things get hot they radiate energy. For example, if you were to observe a blacksmith heating a horseshoe, you’d notice that when the shoe gets hot it glows a red color, and when it gets even hotter it glows white.

blacksmith hot metal

Hot metal glows, emitting electromagnetic radiation.

Physicists considered the case of a black body – a body which absorbs all electromagnetic radiation that falls on it. When it is heated, a black body radiates energy in the form of electromagnetic waves. These waves have a broad range of wavelengths such as visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light.

BUT, in the 1800s people noticed the colors of light radiated in experiments did not agree with those predicted by theory. In scientific language, there was a mismatch between the wavelengths radiated by hot objects and the wavelengths predicted by classical theories of thermodynamics.

The graph below shows the problem. The black curve shows the predicted behavior of a black body at a temperature of 5000 K. The blue line shows the actual behavior.

Black-body Radiation Intensity vs Wavelength

black-body curves

Compare the curve expected from classical thermodynamic theory at a temperature of 5000 K (black line) versus that observed in experiments (blue line). They are very different! Also shown in green and red are curves at somewhat lower temperatures.

Quantum Theory

In order to match theory with observations Planck made a revolutionary proposal. If you’re not already familiar with quantum theory, to understand what he proposed, it might help to think about a times table – for example the three times table – 3, 6, 9, 12, 15… in which only numbers divisible by 3 are allowed and all other numbers are forofferden.

Planck’s idea was that energy is emitted in a similar manner. He proposed that only certain amounts of energy could be emitted – i.e. quanta. Classical physics held that all values of energy were possible.

This was the birth of quantum theory. Planck found that his new theory, based on quanta of energy, accurately predicted the wavelengths of light radiated by a black body.

Planck found the energy carried by electromagnetic radiation must be divisible by a number now called Planck’s constant, represented by the letter h. Energy could then be calculated from the equation:

E = hν

where E is energy, h is Planck’s constant, and ν is the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation. Planck’s constant is a very, very small quantity indeed. Its small size explains why the experimentalists of the time had not realized that electromagnetic energy is quantized. To four significant figures, Planck’s constant is 6.626 x 10-34 J s.

Planck had not intended to overthrow classical physics. His intention was to find a theory that matched experimental observations. Nevertheless, the implications of his discovery were momentous. Quantum theory – the realization that nature has ‘allowed’ and ‘forofferden’ states – had been born and the way we interpret nature would never be the same again.

Planck was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics for:

“the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta.”

Planck himself would later write:

max planck“…it seemed so incompatible with the traditional view of the universe provided by Physics that it eventually destroyed the framework of this older view. For a time it seemed that a complete collapse of classical Physics was not beyond the bounds of possibility; gradually, however, it appeared, as had been confidently expected by all who believed in the steady advance of science, that the introduction of Quantum Theory led not to the destruction of Physics, but to a somewhat profound reconstruction…”

MAX PLANCK, 1931

The universe in the light of modern physics

The Planck Scale

The Planck Scale was born in 1899. It replaced the Earth-centered measurement system of:

a kilogram – the mass of a liter of water

a meter – one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator

a second – 1⁄86400 of an Earth day

with new, universal units based on:

the speed of light

the Planck constant

the gravitational constant

In the following century Stephen Hawking discovered that the Planck scale really does measure something fundamental about nature, showing that the smallest possible black hole has a mass of 1 Planck mass unit, a Schwarzschild radius of 1 Planck length unit, and a half-life of 1 Planck time unit.

Moreover, Jacob Bekenstein found that when any black hole takes in a single elementary particle containing 1 bit of information the area of the event horizon increases 1 square Planck length, revealing a remarkable link between the Planck scale and information.

Some Personal Details and the End

In March 1887, age 28, Planck married Marie Merck. The couple had four children: Karl, Grete, Emma, and Erwin.

Tragically, Planck would live to see the death of his wife and all their children. His wife, Marie, died in 1909 from tuberculosis. Karl was killed in battle in 1916 during World War 1. Grete died in childbirth in 1917, then Emma died also in childbirth in 1919. (Their babies survived.) Erwin was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his suspected part in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Two years after the death of his first wife, Planck married Marga von Hösslin. They had one son, Hermann. Both Marga and Hermann outlived Planck.

Like the famous mathematician David Hilbert, Planck was rather old (74 years of age) when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and he continued living in Germany under the Nazis. Hilbert and Planck deplored the Nazi’s behavior and their policies.

Planck was one of the first scientists to recognize the brilliance of Albert Einstein’s work. He cleared the way for Einstein to move to Berlin to become a professor there in 1914. Later the two would meet up and enjoy themselves tremendously playing music together.

Freeman Dyson“In 1905, when Einstein, than an unknown employee of the Swiss patent office in Bern, sent five revolutionary papers to the physics journal that Planck edited in Berlin, Planck immediately recognized them as works of genius and published them quickly without sending them to referees.”

FREEMAN DYSON, 2015

The New York Review of Books

When the Nazis took control of Germany, Planck was distressed by the need for Einstein and increasing numbers of Jewish scientists to flee from Germany. In 1938 the Nazis took over the Prussian Academy. Planck resigned as the Academy’s president.

At all times, the elderly Planck remained patriotic to Germany, walking a moral tightrope, hoping that the Nazis would come to their senses and act in a way befitting a proper German government. His hopes were increasingly dashed, culminating with the execution of his son Erwin for ‘treason’ in January 1945.

Early in 1944, Planck’s home in Berlin was flattened in an allied air raid. All his personal papers and scientific records were destroyed.

When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Planck, his wife, and his remaining son Hermann found refuge with a relative in the famous German university town of Göttingen. It was there that two years later Max Planck died, age 89, on October 4, 1947. Today he lies buried in Göttingen’s old City Cemetery. Marga’s and Hermann’s graves lie beside his.

In 1948, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed, becoming The Max Planck Society as a tribute to the man who held its presidency twice and gave birth to quantum theory. Today The Max Planck Society is one of the most successful scientific organizations in the world, running over 80 scientific institutions. Since the 1950s research workers from the Max Planck Institutes have been awarded four Nobel Prizes in physics, eight in chemistry, and six in medicine.

max planck“The laws of Physics have no consideration for the human senses; they depend on the facts, and not upon the obviousness of the facts.”

The Nobel Prizes (/noʊˈbɛl/ noh-BEL; Swedish: Nobelpriset [nʊˈbɛ̂lːˌpriːsɛt]; Norwegian: Nobelprisen [nʊˈbɛ̀lːˌpriːsn̩]) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901.[2]

Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace (Nobel characterized the Peace Prize as "to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses").[2] In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank) funded the establishment of the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, to also be administered by the Nobel Foundation.[2][3][4] Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.[5][6]

The prize ceremonies take place annually. Each recipient (known as a "laureate") receives a green gold (aka "electrum") medal plated with 24 karat gold, a diploma, and a monetary award. In 2021, the Nobel Prize monetary award is 10,000,000 SEK.[7] A prize may not be shared among more than three individuals, although the Nobel Peace Prize can be awarded to organizations of more than three people.[8] Although Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, the prize is presented.[9]

The Nobel Prizes, beginning in 1901, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, beginning in 1969, have been awarded 609 times to 975 people and 25 organizations. Five individuals and two organisations have received more than one Nobel Prize.[10]

History

A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair.

Alfred Nobel had the unpleasant surprise of reading his own obituary, which was titled "The Merchant of Death Is Dead", in a French newspaper.

Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, into a family of engineers.[11] He was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite. This invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous.[12]

In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled "The Merchant of Death Is Dead", in a French newspaper. It was Alfred's brother Ludvig who had died; the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will.[13] On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 63 years old.[14]

Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895.[15][16] To widespread astonishment, Nobel's last will specified that his fortune be used to create a series of prizes for those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace.[17] Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million SEK (c. US$186 million, €150 million in 2008), to establish the five Nobel Prizes.[18][19] Owing to skepticism surrounding the will, it was not approved by the Storting in Norway until 26 April 1897.[20] The executors of the will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of the fortune and to organise the awarding of prizes.[21]

Nobel's instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organizations were designated. These were Karolinska Institute on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June.[22] The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded; and, in 1900, the Nobel Foundation's newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II.[17] In 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved.

Nobel Foundation

Formation of Foundation

Main article: Nobel Foundation

A paper with stylish handwriting on it with the title "Testament"

Alfred Nobel's will stated that 94% of his total assets should be used to establish the Nobel Prizes.

According to his will and testament read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896, a foundation established by Alfred Nobel would reward those who serve humanity. The Nobel Prize was funded by Alfred Nobel's personal fortune. According to the official sources, Alfred Nobel bequeathed most of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation that now forms the economic base of the Nobel Prize.[23]

The Nobel Foundation was founded as a private organization on 29 June 1900. Its function is to manage the finances and administration of the Nobel Prizes.[24] In accordance with Nobel's will, the primary task of the foundation is to manage the fortune Nobel left. Robert and Ludvig Nobel were involved in the oil business in Azerbaijan, and according to Swedish historian E. Bargengren, who accessed the Nobel family archive, it was this "decision to allow withdrawal of Alfred's money from Baku that became the decisive factor that enabled the Nobel Prizes to be established".[25] Another important task of the Nobel Foundation is to market the prizes internationally and to oversee informal administration related to the prizes. The foundation is not involved in the process of selecting the Nobel laureates.[26][27] In many ways, the Nobel Foundation is similar to an investment company, in that it invests Nobel's money to create a solid funding base for the prizes and the administrative activities. The Nobel Foundation is exempt from all taxes in Sweden (since 1946) and from investment taxes in the United States (since 1953).[28] Since the 1980s, the foundation's investments have become more profitable and as of 31 December 2007, the assets controlled by the Nobel Foundation amounted to 3.628 billion Swedish kronor (c. US$560 million).[29]

According to the statutes, the foundation consists of a board of five Swedish or Norwegian citizens, with its seat in Stockholm. The Chairman of the Board is appointed by the Swedish King in Council, with the other four members appointed by the trustees of the prize-awarding institutions. An Executive Director is chosen from among the board members, a deputy director is appointed by the King in Council, and two deputies are appointed by the trustees. However, since 1995, all the members of the board have been chosen by the trustees, and the executive director and the deputy director appointed by the board itself. As well as the board, the Nobel Foundation is made up of the prize-awarding institutions (the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute, the Swedish Academy, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee), the trustees of these institutions, and auditors.[29]

Foundation capital and cost

The capital of the Nobel Foundation today is invested 50% in shares, 20% bonds and 30% other investments (e.g. hedge funds or real estate). The distribution can vary by 10 percent.[30] At the beginning of 2008, 64% of the funds were invested mainly in American and European stocks, 20% in bonds, plus 12% in real estate and hedge funds.[31]

In 2011, the total annual cost was approximately 120 million kronor, with 50 million kronor as the prize money. Further costs to pay institutions and persons engaged in giving the prizes were 27.4 million kronor. The events during the Nobel week in Stockholm and Oslo cost 20.2 million kronor. The administration, Nobel symposium, and similar items had costs of 22.4 million kronor. The cost of the Economic Sciences prize of 16.5 Million kronor is paid by the Sveriges Riksbank.[30]

Inaugural Nobel prizes

A black and white photo of a bearded man in his fifties sitting in a chair.

Wilhelm Röntgen received the first Physics Prize for his discovery of X-rays.

Once the Nobel Foundation and its guidelines were in place, the Nobel Committees began collecting nominations for the inaugural prizes. Subsequently, they sent a list of preliminary candidates to the prize-awarding institutions.

The Nobel Committee's Physics Prize shortlist cited Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of X-rays and Philipp Lenard's work on cathode rays. The Academy of Sciences selected Röntgen for the prize.[32][33] In the last decades of the 19th century, many chemists had made significant contributions. Thus, with the Chemistry Prize, the academy "was chiefly faced with merely deciding the order in which these scientists should be awarded the prize".[34] The academy received 20 nominations, eleven of them for Jacobus van 't Hoff.[35] Van 't Hoff was awarded the prize for his contributions in chemical thermodynamics.[36][37]

The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature. A group including 42 Swedish writers, artists, and literary critics protested against this decision, having expected Leo Tolstoy to be awarded.[38] Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticised this prize because they consider Prudhomme a mediocre poet. Feldman's explanation is that most of the academy members preferred Victorian literature and thus selected a Victorian poet.[39] The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist and microbiologist Emil von Behring. During the 1890s, von Behring developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria, which until then was causing thousands of deaths each year.[40][41]

The first Nobel Peace Prize went to the Swiss Jean Henri Dunant for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention, and jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization.

Second World War

In 1938 and 1939, Adolf Hitler's Third Reich forbade three laureates from Germany (Richard Kuhn, Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk) from accepting their prizes.[42] They were all later able to receive the diploma and medal.[43] Even though Sweden was officially neutral during the Second World War, the prizes were awarded irregularly. In 1939, the Peace Prize was not awarded. No prize was awarded in any category from 1940 to 1942, due to the occupation of Norway by Germany. In the subsequent year, all prizes were awarded except those for literature and peace.[44]

During the occupation of Norway, three members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee fled into exile. The remaining members escaped persecution from the Germans when the Nobel Foundation stated that the committee building in Oslo was Swedish property. Thus it was a safe haven from the German military, which was not at war with Sweden.[45] These members kept the work of the committee going, but did not award any prizes. In 1944, the Nobel Foundation, together with the three members in exile, made sure that nominations were submitted for the Peace Prize and that the prize could be awarded once again.[42]

Prize in Economic Sciences

Main article: Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Map of Nobel laureates by country

In 1968, Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank celebrated its 300th anniversary by donating a large sum of money to the Nobel Foundation to be used to set up a prize in honour of Alfred Nobel. The following year, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded for the first time. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences became responsible for selecting laureates. The first laureates for the Economics Prize were Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes".[46][47] The board of the Nobel Foundation decided that after this addition, it would allow no further new prizes.[48]

Award process

The award process is similar for all of the Nobel Prizes, the main difference being who can make nominations for each of them.[49]

The announcement of the laureates in Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 by Gunnar Öquist, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

2009 Nobel Prize in Literature announcement by Peter Englund in Swedish, English, and German

Nominations

Nomination forms are sent by the Nobel Committee to about 3,000 individuals, usually in September the year before the prizes are awarded. These individuals are generally prominent academics working in a relevant area. Regarding the Peace Prize, inquiries are also sent to governments, former Peace Prize laureates, and current or former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The deadline for the return of the nomination forms is 31 January of the year of the award.[49][50] The Nobel Committee nominates about 300 potential laureates from these forms and additional names.[51] The nominees are not publicly named, nor are they told that they are being considered for the prize. All nomination records for a prize are sealed for 50 years from the awarding of the prize.[52][53]

Main article: List of Nobel laureates § 50 year secrecy rule

Selection

The Nobel Committee then prepares a report reflecting the advice of experts in the relevant fields. This, along with the list of preliminary candidates, is submitted to the prize-awarding institutions.[54] There are four awarding institutions for the six prizes awarded:

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – Chemistry; Physics; Economics

Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute – Physiology / Medicine

Swedish Academy – Literature

Norwegian Nobel Committee – Peace

The institutions meet to choose the laureate or laureates in each field by a majority vote. Their decision, which cannot be appealed, is announced immediately after the vote.[55] A maximum of three laureates and two different works may be selected per award. Except for the Peace Prize, which can be awarded to institutions, the awards can only be given to individuals.[56]

Posthumous nominations

Although posthumous nominations are not presently permitted, individuals who died in the months between their nomination and the decision of the prize committee were originally eligible to receive the prize. This has occurred twice: the 1931 Literature Prize awarded to Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and the 1961 Peace Prize awarded to UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. Since 1974, laureates must be thought alive at the time of the October announcement. There has been one laureate, William Vickrey, who in 1996 died after the prize (in Economics) was announced but before it could be presented.[57] On 3 October 2011, the laureates for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were announced; however, the committee was not aware that one of the laureates, Ralph M. Steinman, had died three days earlier. The committee was debating about Steinman's prize, since the rule is that the prize is not awarded posthumously.[9] The committee later decided that as the decision to award Steinman the prize "was made in good faith", it would remain unchanged.[58]

Recognition time lag

Nobel's will provided for prizes to be awarded in recognition of discoveries made "during the preceding year". Early on, the awards usually recognised recent discoveries.[59] However, some of those early discoveries were later discredited. For example, Johannes Fibiger was awarded the 1926 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his purported discovery of a parasite that caused cancer.[60] To avoid repeating this embarrassment, the awards increasingly recognised scientific discoveries that had withstood the test of time.[61][62][63] According to Ralf Pettersson, former chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine, "the criterion 'the previous year' is interpreted by the Nobel Assembly as the year when the full impact of the discovery has become evident."[62]

A room with pictures on the walls. In the middle of the room there is a wooden table with chairs around it.

The committee room of the Norwegian Nobel Committee

The interval between the award and the accomplishment it recognises varies from discipline to discipline. The Literature Prize is typically awarded to recognise a cumulative lifetime body of work rather than a single achievement.[64][65] The Peace Prize can also be awarded for a lifetime body of work. For example, 2008 laureate Martti Ahtisaari was awarded for his work to resolve international conflicts.[66][67] However, they can also be awarded for specific recent events.[68] For instance, Kofi Annan was awarded the 2001 Peace Prize just four years after becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations.[69] Similarly Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres received the 1994 award, about a year after they successfully concluded the Oslo Accords.[70] A recent controversy was caused by awarding the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama during his first year as US president.[71][72]

Awards for physics, chemistry, and medicine are typically awarded once the achievement has been widely accepted. Sometimes, this takes decades – for example, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Physics Prize for his 1930s work on stellar structure and evolution.[73][74] Not all scientists live long enough for their work to be recognised. Some discoveries can never be considered for a prize if their impact is realised after the discoverers have died.[75][76][77]

Award ceremonies

Two men standing on a stage. The man to the left is clapping his hands and looking towards the other man. The second man is smiling and showing two items to an audience not seen on the image. The items are a diploma which includes a painting and a box containing a gold medal. Behind them is a blue pillar clad in flowers.

A man in his fifties standing behind a desk with computers on it. On the desk is a sign reading "Kungl. Vetensk. Akad. Sigil".

Right: Giovanni Jona-Lasinio presenting Yoichiro Nambu's Nobel Lecture at Aula Magna, Stockholm in 2008; Left: Barack Obama after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo City Hall from the hands of Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjørn Jagland in 2009

Except for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Prizes are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, at the annual Prize Award Ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The recipients' lectures are normally held in the days prior to the award ceremony. The Peace Prize and its recipients' lectures are presented at the annual Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, usually on 10 December. The award ceremonies and the associated banquets are typically major international events.[78][79] The Prizes awarded in Sweden's ceremonies are held at the Stockholm Concert Hall, with the Nobel banquet following immediately at Stockholm City Hall. The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony has been held at the Norwegian Nobel Institute (1905–1946), at the auditorium of the University of Oslo (1947–1989), and at Oslo City Hall (1990–present).[80]

The highlight of the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm occurs when each Nobel laureate steps forward to receive the prize from the hands of the King of Sweden. In Oslo, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee presents the Nobel Peace Prize in the presence of the King of Norway and the Norwegian royal family.[79][81] At first, King Oscar II did not approve of awarding grand prizes to foreigners. It is said[by whom?] that he changed his mind once his attention had been drawn to the publicity value of the prizes for Sweden.[82]

Nobel Banquet

Main article: Nobel Banquet

A set table with a white table cloth. There are many plates and glasses plus a menu visible on the table.

Table at the 2005 Nobel Banquet in Stockholm

After the award ceremony in Sweden, a banquet is held in the Blue Hall at the Stockholm City Hall, which is attended by the Swedish Royal Family and around 1,300 guests. The Nobel Peace Prize banquet is held in Norway at the Oslo Grand Hotel after the award ceremony. Apart from the laureate, guests include the president of the Storting, on occasion the Swedish prime minister, and, since 2006, the King and Queen of Norway. In total, about 250 guests attend.

Nobel lecture

According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, each laureate is required to give a public lecture on a subject related to the topic of their prize.[83] The Nobel lecture as a rhetorical genre took decades to reach its current format.[84] These lectures normally occur during Nobel Week (the week leading up to the award ceremony and banquet, which begins with the laureates arriving in Stockholm and normally ends with the Nobel banquet), but this is not mandatory. The laureate is only obliged to give the lecture within six months of receiving the prize, but some have happened even later. For example, US President Theodore Roosevelt received the Peace Prize in 1906 but gave his lecture in 1910, after his term in office.[85] The lectures are organized by the same association which selected the laureates.[86]

Prizes

Medals

The Nobel Foundation announced on 30 May 2012 that it had awarded the contract for the production of the five (Swedish) Nobel Prize medals to Svenska Medalj AB. Between 1902 and 2010, the Nobel Prize medals were minted by Myntverket (the Swedish Mint), Sweden's oldest company, which ceased operations in 2011 after 107 years. In 2011, the Mint of Norway, located in Kongsberg, made the medals. The Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation.[87]

Each medal features an image of Alfred Nobel in left profile on the obverse. The medals for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature have identical obverses, showing the image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death. Nobel's portrait also appears on the obverse of the Peace Prize medal and the medal for the Economics Prize, but with a slightly different design. For instance, the laureate's name is engraved on the rim of the Economics medal.[88] The image on the reverse of a medal varies according to the institution awarding the prize. The reverse sides of the medals for chemistry and physics share the same design.[89]

A heavily decorated paper with the name "Fritz Haber" on it.

Laureates receive a heavily decorated diploma together with a gold medal and the prize money. Here Fritz Haber's diploma is shown, which he received for the development of a method to synthesise ammonia.

All medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold. Since then, they have been struck in 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold. The weight of each medal varies with the value of gold, but averages about 175 grams (0.386 lb) for each medal. The diameter is 66 millimetres (2.6 in) and the thickness varies between 5.2 millimetres (0.20 in) and 2.4 millimetres (0.094 in).[90] Because of the high value of their gold content and tendency to be on public display, Nobel medals are subject to medal theft.[91][92][93] During World War II, the medals of German scientists Max von Laue and James Franck were sent to Copenhagen for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark, Hungarian chemist (and Nobel laureate himself) George de Hevesy dissolved them in aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), to prevent confiscation by Nazi Germany and to prevent legal problems for the holders. After the war, the gold was recovered from solution, and the medals re-cast.[94]

Diplomas

Nobel laureates receive a diploma directly from the hands of the King of Sweden, or in the case of the peace prize, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Each diploma is uniquely designed by the prize-awarding institutions for the laureates that receive them.[88] The diploma contains a picture and text in Swedish which states the name of the laureate and normally a citation of why they received the prize. None of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates has ever had a citation on their diplomas.[95][96]

Award money

The laureates are given a sum of money when they receive their prizes, in the form of a document confirming the amount awarded.[88] The amount of prize money depends upon how much money the Nobel Foundation can award each year. The purse has increased since the 1980s, when the prize money was 880,000 SEK per prize (c. 2.6 million SEK altogether, US$350,000 today). In 2009, the monetary award was 10 million SEK (US$1.4 million).[97][98] In June 2012, it was lowered to 8 million SEK.[99] If two laureates share the prize in a category, the award grant is divided equally between the recipients. If there are three, the awarding committee has the option of dividing the grant equally, or awarding one-half to one recipient and one-quarter to each of the others.[100][101][102] It is common for recipients to donate prize money to benefit scientific, cultural, or humanitarian causes.[103][104]

Controversies and criticisms

Main article: Nobel Prize controversies

Controversial recipients

When it was announced that Henry Kissinger was to be awarded the Peace Prize, two of the Norwegian Nobel Committee members resigned in protest.

Among other criticisms, the Nobel Committees have been accused of having a political agenda, and of omitting more deserving candidates. They have also been accused of Eurocentrism, especially for the Literature Prize.[105][106][107]

Peace Prize

Among the most criticised Nobel Peace Prizes was the one awarded to Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ. This led to the resignation of two Norwegian Nobel Committee members.[108] Kissinger and Thọ were awarded the prize for negotiating a ceasefire between North Vietnam and the United States in January 1973 during the Vietnam War. However, when the award was announced, both sides were still engaging in hostilities.[109] Critics sympathetic to the North announced that Kissinger was not a peace-maker but the opposite, responsible for widening the war. Those hostile to the North and what they considered its deceptive practices during negotiations were deprived of a chance to criticise Lê Đức Thọ, as he declined the award.[52][110] The satirist and musician Tom Lehrer has remarked that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."[111]

Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin received the Peace Prize in 1994 for their efforts in making peace between Israel and Palestine.[52][112] Immediately after the award was announced, one of the five Norwegian Nobel Committee members denounced Arafat as a terrorist and resigned.[113] Additional misgivings about Arafat were widely expressed in various newspapers.[114]

Another controversial Peace Prize was that awarded to Barack Obama in 2009.[115] Nominations had closed only eleven days after Obama took office as President of the United States, but the actual evaluation occurred over the next eight months.[116] Obama himself stated that he did not feel deserving of the award, or worthy of the company in which it would place him.[117][118] Past Peace Prize laureates were divided, some saying that Obama deserved the award, and others saying he had not secured the achievements to yet merit such an accolade. Obama's award, along with the previous Peace Prizes for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, also prompted accusations of a liberal bias.[119]

Literature Prize

The award of the 2004 Literature Prize to Elfriede Jelinek drew a protest from a member of the Swedish Academy, Knut Ahnlund. Ahnlund resigned, alleging that the selection of Jelinek had caused "irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art". He alleged that Jelinek's works were "a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure".[120][121] The 2009 Literature Prize to Herta Müller also generated criticism. According to The Washington Post, many US literary critics and professors were ignorant of her work.[122] This made those critics feel the prizes were too Eurocentric.[123] The 2019 Literature Prize to Peter Handke received heavy criticisms from various authors, such as Salman Rushdie and Hari Kunzru, and was condemned by the governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Turkey, due to his history of Bosnian genocide denialism and his support for Slobodan Milošević.[124][125][126]

Science prizes

In 1949, the neurologist António Egas Moniz received the Physiology or Medicine Prize for his development of the prefrontal leucotomy. The previous year, Dr. Walter Freeman had developed a version of the procedure which was faster and easier to carry out. Due in part to the publicity surrounding the original procedure, Freeman's procedure was prescribed without due consideration or regard for modern medical ethics. Endorsed by such influential publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, leucotomy or "lobotomy" became so popular that about 5,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States in the three years immediately following Moniz's receipt of the Prize.[127][128]

Overlooked achievements

Mahatma Gandhi, although nominated five times, was never awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Although Mahatma Gandhi, an icon of nonviolence in the 20th century, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947, and a few days before he was assassinated on 30 January 1948, he was never awarded the prize.[129][130][131]

In 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate".[129][132]

In 1989, this omission was publicly regretted, when the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize, the chairman of the committee said that it was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi".[133]

Geir Lundestad, 2006 Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee, said,

The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace Prize. Whether the Nobel committee can do without Gandhi, is the question.[134][135]

Other high-profile individuals with widely recognised contributions to peace have been overlooked. In 2009, an article in Foreign Policy magazine identified seven people who "never won the prize, but should have". The list consisted of Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Václav Havel, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sari Nusseibeh, Corazon Aquino, and Liu Xiaobo.[131] Liu Xiaobo would go on to win the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize while imprisoned.

In 1965, UN Secretary General U Thant was informed by the Norwegian Permanent Representative to the UN that he would be awarded that year's prize and asked whether or not he would accept. He consulted staff and later replied that he would. At the same time, Chairman Gunnar Jahn of the Nobel Peace prize committee, lobbied heavily against giving U Thant the prize and the prize was at the last minute awarded to UNICEF. The rest of the committee all wanted the prize to go to U Thant, for his work in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, ending the war in the Congo, and his ongoing work to mediate an end to the Vietnam War. The disagreement lasted three years and in 1966 and 1967 no prize was given, with Gunnar Jahn effectively vetoing an award to U Thant.[136][137]

James Joyce, one of the controversial omissions of the Literature Prize

The Literature Prize also has controversial omissions. Adam Kirsch has suggested that many notable writers have missed out on the award for political or extra-literary reasons. The heavy focus on European and Swedish authors has been a subject of criticism.[138][139] The Eurocentric nature of the award was acknowledged by Peter Englund, the 2009 Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, as a problem with the award and was attributed to the tendency for the academy to relate more to European authors.[140] This tendency towards European authors still leaves many European writers on a list of notable writers that have been overlooked for the Literature Prize, including Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, J. R. R. Tolkien, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, James Joyce, August Strindberg, Simon Vestdijk, Karel Čapek, the New World's Jorge Luis Borges, Ezra Pound, John Updike, Arthur Miller, Mark Twain, and Africa's Chinua Achebe.[141]

Candidates can receive multiple nominations the same year. Gaston Ramon received a total of 155[142] nominations in physiology or medicine from 1930 to 1953, the last year with public nomination data for that award as of 2016. He died in 1963 without being awarded. Pierre Paul Émile Roux received 115[143] nominations in physiology or medicine, and Arnold Sommerfeld received 84[144] in physics. These are the three most nominated scientists without awards in the data published as of 2016.[145] Otto Stern received 79[146] nominations in physics 1925–1943 before being awarded in 1943.[147]

The strict rule against awarding a prize to more than three people is also controversial.[148] When a prize is awarded to recognise an achievement by a team of more than three collaborators, one or more will miss out. For example, in 2002, the prize was awarded to Koichi Tanaka and John Fenn for the development of mass spectrometry in protein chemistry, an award that did not recognise the achievements of Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas of the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt.[149][150]

According to one of the nominees for the prize in physics, the three person limit deprived him and two other members of his team of the honor in 2013: the team of Carl Hagen, Gerald Guralnik, and Tom Kibble published a paper in 1964 that gave answers to how the cosmos began, but did not share the 2013 Physics Prize awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert, who had also published papers in 1964 concerning the subject. All five physicists arrived at the same conclusion, albeit from different angles. Hagen contends that an equitable solution is to either abandon the three limit restriction, or expand the time period of recognition for a given achievement to two years.[151]

Similarly, the prohibition of posthumous awards fails to recognise achievements by an individual or collaborator who dies before the prize is awarded. The Economics Prize was not awarded to Fischer Black, who died in 1995, when his co-author Myron Scholes received the honor in 1997 for their landmark work on option pricing along with Robert C. Merton, another pioneer in the development of valuation of stock options. In the announcement of the award that year, the Nobel committee prominently mentioned Black's key role.

Political subterfuge may also deny proper recognition. Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann, who co-discovered nuclear fission along with Otto Hahn, may have been denied a share of Hahn's 1944 Nobel Chemistry Award due to having fled Germany when the Nazis came to power.[152] The Meitner and Strassmann roles in the research was not fully recognised until years later, when they joined Hahn in receiving the 1966 Enrico Fermi Award.

Emphasis on discoveries over inventions

Alfred Nobel left his fortune to finance annual prizes to be awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind".[153] He stated that the Nobel Prizes in Physics should be given "to the person who shall have made the most important 'discovery' or 'invention' within the field of physics". Nobel did not emphasise discoveries, but they have historically been held in higher respect by the Nobel Prize Committee than inventions: 77% of the Physics Prizes have been given to discoveries, compared with only 23% to inventions. Christoph Bartneck and Matthias Rauterberg, in papers published in Nature and Technoetic Arts, have argued this emphasis on discoveries has moved the Nobel Prize away from its original intention of rewarding the greatest contribution to society.[154][155]

Gender disparity

There have been a total of 57 women Nobel laureates compared to 873 men. Most female laureates received them in the peace and literature categories. Marie Curie was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in 1903, and the only woman to receive it twice.

See also: List of female Nobel laureates and List of female nominees for the Nobel Prize

In terms of the most prestigious awards in STEM fields, only a small proportion have been awarded to women. Out of 210 laureates in Physics, 181 in Chemistry and 216 in Medicine between 1901 and 2018, there were only three female laureates in physics, five in chemistry and 12 in medicine.[156][157][158][159] Factors proposed to contribute to the discrepancy between this and the roughly equal human sex ratio include biased nominations, fewer women than men being active in the relevant fields, Nobel Prizes typically being awarded decades after the research was done (reflecting a time when gender bias in the relevant fields was greater), a greater delay in awarding Nobel Prizes for women's achievements making longevity a more important factor for women (one cannot be nominated for the Nobel Prize posthumously), and a tendency to omit women from jointly awarded Nobel Prizes.[160][161][162][163][164][165] Despite these factors, Marie Curie is to date the only person awarded Nobel Prizes in two different sciences (Physics in 1903, Chemistry in 1911); she is one of only three people who have received two Nobel Prizes in sciences (see Multiple laureates below). Malala Yousafzai is the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When she received it in 2014, she was only 17 years old.[166]

Status of the Economic Sciences Prize

Peter Nobel describes the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel as a "false Nobel prize" that dishonours his relative Alfred Nobel, after whom the prize is named, and considers economics to be a pseudoscience.[167][168]

Statistics

Youngest person to receive a Nobel Prize:

Malala Yousafzai; at the age of 17, received Nobel Peace Prize (2014).

Oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize:

John B. Goodenough; at the age of 97, received Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2019).

Only person to receive more than one unshared Nobel Prize:

Linus Pauling; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1954) and Nobel Peace Prize (1962).

Country with most Nobel laureates:

Main article: List of Nobel laureates by country

United States; 403 Nobel laureates, as of 2022.

Laureates who have received multiple Nobel Prizes: (by date of second Prize)

Marie Curie; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) and Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911).

International Committee of the Red Cross; received the prize three times. Nobel Peace Prize (1917, 1944, 1963).

Linus Pauling; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1954) and Nobel Peace Prize (1962).

John Bardeen; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Physics (1956, 1972).

Frederick Sanger; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1958, 1980).

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; received the prize twice. Nobel Peace Prize (1954, 1981).

Karl Barry Sharpless; received the prize twice. Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2001, 2022).

Posthumous Nobel Prizes laureates:

Erik Axel Karlfeldt; received Nobel Prize in Literature (1931).

Dag Hammarskjöld; received Nobel Peace Prize (1961).

Ralph M. Steinman; received Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2011).

Married couples to receive Nobel Prizes:[169]

Main article: List of couples awarded the Nobel Prize

Marie Curie, Pierre Curie (along with Henri Becquerel). Received Nobel Prize in Physics (1903).

Irène Joliot-Curie, Frédéric Joliot. Received Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1935).

Gerty Cori, Carl Cori. Received Nobel Prize in Medicine (1947).

Gunnar Myrdal received Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences (1974), Alva Myrdal received Nobel Peace Prize (1982).

May-Britt Moser, Edvard I. Moser. Received Nobel Prize in Medicine (2014)

Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee (along with Michael Kremer). Received Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences (2019).[170]

Years without prizes:

Physics: 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941, 1942

Chemistry: 1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, 1941, 1942

Physiology or Medicine: 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1921, 1925, 1940, 1941, 1942

Literature: 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943

Peace: 1914, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, 1972

Specially distinguished laureates

Multiple laureates

A black and white portrait of a woman in profile.

Marie Curie, one of five people who have received the Nobel Prize twice (Physics and Chemistry)

Five people have received two Nobel Prizes. Marie Curie received the Physics Prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity and the Chemistry Prize in 1911 for the isolation of pure radium,[171] making her the only person to be awarded a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. Linus Pauling was awarded the 1954 Chemistry Prize for his research into the chemical bond and its application to the structure of complex substances. Pauling was also awarded the Peace Prize in 1962 for his activism against nuclear weapons, making him the only laureate of two unshared prizes. John Bardeen received the Physics Prize twice: in 1956 for the invention of the transistor and in 1972 for the theory of superconductivity.[172] Frederick Sanger received the prize twice in Chemistry: in 1958 for determining the structure of the insulin molecule and in 1980 for inventing a method of determining base sequences in DNA.[173][174] Karl Barry Sharpless was awarded the 2001 Chemistry Prize for his research into chirally catalysed oxidation reactions, and the 2022 Chemistry Prize for click chemistry.

Two organizations have received the Peace Prize multiple times. The International Committee of the Red Cross received it three times: in 1917 and 1944 for its work during the world wars; and in 1963 during the year of its centenary.[175][176][177] The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Peace Prize twice for assisting refugees: in 1954 and 1981.[178]

Family laureates

The Curie family has received the most prizes, with four prizes awarded to five individual laureates. Marie Curie received the prizes in Physics (in 1903) and Chemistry (in 1911). Her husband, Pierre Curie, shared the 1903 Physics prize with her.[179] Their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, received the Chemistry Prize in 1935 together with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie. In addition, the husband of Marie Curie's second daughter, Henry Labouisse, was the director of UNICEF when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on that organisation's behalf.[180]

Although no family matches the Curie family's record, there have been several with two laureates. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to the husband-and-wife team of Gerty Cori and Carl Ferdinand Cori in 1947 Prize,[181] and by the husband-and-wife team of May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser in 2014 (along with John O'Keefe).[182] The Physics Prize in 1906 was won by J. J. Thomson for showing that electrons are particles, and in 1937 by his son, George Paget Thomson, for showing that they also have the properties of waves.[183] William Henry Bragg and his son, William Lawrence Bragg, shared the Physics Prize in 1915 for inventing X-ray crystallography.[184] Niels Bohr was awarded the Physics Prize in 1922, as was his son, Aage Bohr, in 1975.[180][185][186] The Physics Prize was awarded to Manne Siegbahn in 1924, followed by his son, Kai Siegbahn, in 1981.[180][187] Hans von Euler-Chelpin, who received the Chemistry Prize in 1929, was the father of Ulf von Euler, who was awarded the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1970.[180] C. V. Raman was awarded the Physics Prize in 1930 and was the uncle of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was awarded the same prize in 1983.[188][189] Arthur Kornberg received the Physiology or Medicine Prize in 1959; Kornberg's son Roger later received the Chemistry Prize in 2006.[190] Arthur Schawlow received the 1981 Physics prize, and was married to the sister of 1964 Physics laureate Charles Townes.[191] Two members of the Hodgkin family received Nobels in consecutive years: Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin shared in the Nobel for Physiology or Medicine in 1963, followed by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, the wife of his first cousin, who won solo for Chemistry in 1964. Jan Tinbergen, who was awarded the first Economics Prize in 1969, was the brother of Nikolaas Tinbergen, who received the 1973 Physiology or Medicine Prize.[180] Gunnar Myrdal who was awarded the Economics Prize in 1974, was the husband of Alva Myrdal, Peace Prize laureate in 1982.[180] Economics laureates Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow were brothers-in-law. Frits Zernike, who was awarded the 1953 Physics Prize, is the great-uncle of 1999 Physics laureate Gerard 't Hooft.[192] In 2019, married couple Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were awarded the Economics Prize.[193] Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard was awarded the Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995, and her nephew Benjamin List received the Chemistry Prize in 2021.[194] Sune Bergström was awarded the Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982, and his son Svante Pääbo was awarded the same prize in 2022. Edwin McMillan, who was awarded the Prize in Chemistry in 1951, is the uncle of John Clauser, who was awarded the Prize in Physics in 2022.

Refusals and constraints

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Richard Kuhn, who was forced to decline his Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Two laureates have voluntarily declined the Nobel Prize. In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Literature Prize, but refused, stating, "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honourable form."[195] Lê Đức Thọ, chosen for the 1973 Peace Prize for his role in the Paris Peace Accords, declined, stating that there was no actual peace in Vietnam.[196] George Bernard Shaw attempted to decline the prize money while accepting the 1925 Literature Prize; eventually it was agreed to use it to found the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation.[197]

During the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler hindered Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt, and Gerhard Domagk from accepting their prizes. All of them were awarded their diplomas and gold medals after World War II.[198][199]

In 1958, Boris Pasternak declined his prize for literature due to fear of what the Soviet Union government might do if he travelled to Stockholm to accept his prize. In return, the Swedish Academy refused his refusal, saying "this refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award."[196] The academy announced with regret that the presentation of the Literature Prize could not take place that year, holding it back until 1989 when Pasternak's son accepted the prize on his behalf.[200][201]

Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but her children accepted the prize because she had been placed under house arrest in Burma; Suu Kyi delivered her speech two decades later, in 2012.[202] Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while he and his wife were under house arrest in China as political prisoners, and he was unable to accept the prize in his lifetime.

Cultural impact

Being a symbol of scientific or literary achievement that is recognisable worldwide, the Nobel Prize is often depicted in fiction. This includes films like The Prize (1963), Nobel Son (2007), and The Wife (2017) about fictional Nobel laureates, as well as fictionalised accounts of stories surrounding real prizes such as Nobel Chor, a 2012 film based on the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's prize.[203][204]

The statue and memorial symbol Planet of Alfred Nobel was opened in Alfred Nobel University of Economics and Law in Dnipro, Ukraine in 2008. On the globe, there are 802 Nobel laureates' reliefs made of a composite alloy obtained when disposing of military strategic missiles.[205]

Despite the symbolism of intellectual achievement, some recipients have embraced unsupported and pseudoscientific concepts, including various health benefits of vitamin C and other dietary supplements, homeopathy, HIV/AIDS denialism, and various claims about race and intelligence.[206] This is sometimes referred to as Nobel disease.

LOT Photos Estate Nobel Laureate Max Planck Granddaughter QUANTUM PHYSICS SCARCE (2023)

LOT Photos Estate Nobel Laureate Max Planck Granddaughter QUANTUM PHYSICS SCARCE: $5549.98

LOT Photos Estate Nobel Laureate Max Planck Granddaughter QUANTUM PHYSICS SCARCE:
$5549.98