Maxwell Ludwig Planck was born in 1858 to a distinguished
German family, the latest in a long line of academics and intellectuals. Planck's
great grandfather, Gottlieb Jakob Planck, was a professor of theology
at the famed University of Göttingen, and his son followed suit.
Maxwell's father, Wilhelm Julius Planck, gravitated toward less
ethereal pursuits than his forebears: Wilhelm became a professor
of law.
In 1858, Wilhelm's sixth child was born: Maxwell. This
Planck was also destined to enter the academic world and to excel
there, though this was not always evident in his youth. According
to his school records, Planck did well academically, but he was
never the best. Though he was good at everything, he excelled at
nothing. In fact, his teachers were less impressed with his academic
performance than they were with his personality: even in his youth
Planck was admired as an upstanding young man, beloved by both
teachers and students.
But Planck eventually discovered a subject in which he
did excel and, more importantly, a subject that he loved: physics.
He uncovered his intereste in physics at the gymnasium, or secondary
school, thanks to the prompting of a teacher named Herman Müller. Müller
encouraged Planck to take a holistic view of physics, to appreciate
the beauty of the mathematically complex natural world.
Planck continued his studies at the University of Munich,
where he enjoyed his work but didn't believe that he had any great
aptitude for the discipline. His professors certainly didn't helpm
and, at one point, his thesis advisor warned him to choose a different
field of study, as all the important discoveries in physics had
already been made. But Planck persevered, claiming that he didn't
care if he made an important discovery–he cared less about making
a name for himself and more about understanding the fundamental
workings of the universe.
Most of all in these early days, Planck wanted to understand
the fundamental laws of thermodynamics:
the conservation of energy and entropy. Planck chose these laws
for his dissertation. Planck believed that all physical processes
could somehow be traced back to the laws of thermodynamics, and
he was convinced that the keys to understanding these processes
lay in entropy.
In 1879, when he wrote his dissertation, few other physicists cared
about entropy, and the dissertation was largely overlooked. However,
over the next decade, thermodynamics became increasingly more popular,
and as demand for information on the subject grew, so did Planck's
reputation.
This was only the beginning for Planck. In 1892, although
he had yet to produce any particularly remarkable work, Planck
was hired as a full professor at the prestigious University of
Berlin. In 1894, he was made a member of the Berlin Academy of
Sciences. Throughout, he worked diligently at deciphering the mysteries
of classical thermodynamics and, by 1897, he was the world's leading
authority on the subject.
But Planck's interest in classical physics was about to
lead him to what would prove to be the most challenging and most
rewarding puzzle of his scientific career: the problem of blackbody
radiation. His eventual solution to this problem would force him
to challenge and destroy his devotion to classical physics itself.
But at the end of the nineteenth century, when Planck turned his
attention to the popular problem of blackbody radiation, he had
no idea that intellectual transformation and international acclaim
were to follow. He knew only that he'd encountered yet another
physical puzzle that he was determined to understand, no matter
what.
