Wilhelm Wien

Wilhelm Wien
File:WilhelmWien1911.jpg
Born	Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (1864-01-13)13 January 1864 Fischhausen, East Prussia
Died	30 August 1928(1928-08-30) (aged 64) Munich, Germany
Nationality	Germany
Alma mater	University of Göttingen University of Berlin
Known for	Blackbody radiation
Spouse	Luise Mehler (1898)
Awards	Nobel Prize for Physics (1911)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of Giessen University of Würzburg University of Munich RWTH Aachen
Doctoral advisor	Hermann von Helmholtz
Doctoral students	Karl Hartmann

Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (German: IPA: [/viːn/]) (13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to compose Wien's displacement law, which relates the maximum emission of a blackbody to its temperature. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.

Biography

Early years

Wien was born at Fischhausen (Rybaki), Province of Prussia (now Primorsk, Russia) as the son of landowner Carl Wien. In 1866, his family moved to Drachstein, in Rastenburg (Rastembork.

In 1879, Wien went to school in Rastenburg and from 1880-1882 he attended the city school of Heidelberg. In 1882 he attended the University of Göttingen and the University of Berlin. From 1883-85, he worked in the laboratory of Hermann von Helmholtz and, in 1886, he received his Ph.D. with a thesis on the diffraction of light upon metals and on the influence of various materials upon the color of refracted light. From 1896 to 1899, Wien lectured at the prestigious Aachen University of Technology. In 1900 he went to the University Würzburg and became successor of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen.

Career

In 1896 Wien emperically determined a distribution law of blackbody radiation, later named after him Wien's law. Max Planck, who was a colleague of Wien's, did not beleive in emperical laws, so using electromagentism and thermodynamics, he proposed a theoretical basis for Wein's law, which became the Wien-Planck law. However, Wien's law, was only valid at high frequencies, and underestimated the radiancy at low frequencies. Planck, corrected the theory, and proposed what is know called Planck's law, which led to the development of quantum theory. However, Wien's other emperical forumlation $\lambda _{\mathrm {max} }T=constant$, called Wien's displacement law, is still very useful, as it relates the peak wavelength emitted by a body (λ_max), to the temperature of the body (T). In 1900 (following the work of George Frederick Charles Searle), he assumed that the entire mass of matter is of electromagnetic origin and proposed the formula $m=(4/3)E/c^{2}$ for the relation between electromagnetic mass and electromagnetic energy.

While studying streams of ionized gas, Wien, in 1898, identified a positive particle equal in mass to the hydrogen atom. Wien, with this work, laid the foundation of mass spectroscopy. J. J. Thomson refined Wien's apparatus and conducted further experiments in 1913 then, after work by Ernest Rutherford in 1919, Wien's particle was accepted and named the proton.

Bibliography

• Lehrbuch der Hydrodynamik (1900, physics)
• Aus dem Leben und Wirken eines Physikers (1930, memoir)

See also

• Wien's Distribution Law
• History of special relativity
• Mass–energy equivalence

References

• Wien, W. (1904) „Über die Differentialgleichungen der Elektrodynamik für bewegte Körper“ / |"On the differential equations of the electrodynamics for moving bodies" ; Annalen der Physik (Series 4), 13(4), 641-662, 663-668; (but now as digitized German text, with parallel English translation, plus extra references and footnotes).     For a facsimile of the original (part 1 only), follow the "Band 318" link from [1].
• E. Rüchardt (1955). "Zur Erinnerung an Wilhelm Wien bei der 25. Wiederkehr seines Todestages". Naturwissenschaften. 42 (3): 57–62. doi:10.1007/BF00589524.
• E. Rüchardt (1936). "Zur Entdeckung der Kanalstrahlen vor fünfzig Jahren". Naturwissenschaften. 24 (30): 57–62. doi:10.1007/BF01473963.

External links

• Wilhelm Wien
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Wilhelm Wien", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

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