Related papers: ".. I didn't reflect much on what I was doing.." H…
Around year 2000 the centenary of Planck's thermal radiation formula awakened interest in the origins of quantum theory, traditionally traced back to the Planck's conference on 14 December 1900 at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. A lot of…
We review the derivation of Planck's Radiation Formula on the light of recent studies in its centenary. We discuss specially the issue of discreteness, Planck's opinion on his discovery, and the critical analysis on the contributions by…
In this contribution I discuss a peak in Einstein's endeavor to extract as much information as possible about the nature of radiation from the Planck distribution is his paper "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation" of 1916. This is one of the…
Planck's introduction of the quantum of action in 1900 was followed by 25 years of trial and error in quest of the understanding of the quantum world; different ideas and directions had to be pursued until the path leading to the elementary…
In the year 1900 Max Planck was led by experimental observations to propose a strange formula for the intensity as a function of frequency for light emitted by a cavity. It relied on peculiar properties to be obeyed by the emitters and…
From its very beginning, Quantum Theory developed contrary to the intentions of its creators. For Max Planck it marks the failure of a long-term research program, in which he tried to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics…
The origin of quantum physics was the discovery of the base unit of electromagnetic action $h$ by Max Planck in 1900 when he analyzed the experimental results of the black body radiation. This permitted Albert Einstein a few years later to…
It is shown how the study of blackbody radiation in the early twentieth century by the German physicist Max Planck gave rise to the quantum theory.
On 14 December 1900 Max Planck first formulated the idea of energy quanta related to a new universal constant now known as Planck's constant. Despite the following progress of thus initiated "quantum mechanics", the physical origin of both…
A hundred years ago, the quantum concept provoked a revolution in science and the search of a new conceptual basis for whole physics, as emphasized by Einstein. In this paper, I discuss the essential features of Planck's works in 1900 on…
In 1905 the well-known physicist Max Planck was coeditor of the Annalen der Physik, and he accepted Einstein's paper on light quanta for publication, even though he disliked the idea of "light quanta". Einstein's relativity paper was…
The Planck's radiation law for the blackbody radiation spectrum was capable to explain the experimentally-measured blackbody spectrum. In order to get this result, Planck proposed his radiation law in a two-fold way: 1) by an \textit{ad…
In two respects Ludwig Boltzmann was a pioneer of quantum mechanics. First because in his statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics he introduced the theory of probability into a fundamental law of physics and thus…
The notion of gravitational radiation begins with electromagnetic radiation. In 1887 Heinrich Hertz, working in one room, generated and received electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell's equations describe the electromagnetic field. The quanta…
It is very common to introduce quantum physics in an historical context. Though there are advantages to this, it is a problem that many of the stories that have become central to the physics lore are mere pseudo-histories far detached from…
The discovery of the Planck's relation is generally regarded as the starting point of quantum physics. The Planck's constant h is now regarded as one of the most important universal constants. The physical nature of h, however, has not been…
Einstein was in many ways like a detective on a mystery trail, though in his case he was on the trail of nature's mysteries and not some murder mystery! And like all good detectives he had a style. It consisted of taking facts that he knew…
Planck's law for black-body radiation marks the origin of quantum theory and is discussed in all introductory (or advanced) courses on this subject. However, the question whether Planck really implied quantisation is debated among…
In 1893, Wien applied the first two laws of thermodynamics to blackbody radiation and derived his displacement theorem. Believing that the information from thermodynamics had been exhausted, Planck turned to statistical ideas in 1900 in…
A history and drama of the development of quantum probability theory is outlined starting from the discovery of the Plank's constant exactly a 100 years ago. It is shown that before the rise of quantum mechanics 75 years ago, the quantum…