Max Planck

Max Planck was a German theoretical physicist whose 1900 derivation of the blackbody radiation law introduced energy quanta, founding quantum theory and earning him the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics Educated at Munich and Berlin under Kirchhoff and Helmholtz, he earned his Ph.D. at age 21 in 1879 and devoted his early career to thermodynamics and entropy Planck was also the first prominent physicist to champion Albert Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity and helped bring Einstein to Berlin in 1914 Planck's Radiation Law (1900): Presented on October 19, 1900 and derived from first principles on December 14, 1900, accurately describing blackbody radiation across all frequencies where Wien's law failed at low frequencies