1911 Nobel Laureate in Physics
in full WILHELM CARL WERNER OTTO FRITZ FRANZ WIEN (1864-1928), German physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1911 for his displacement law concerning the radiation emitted by the perfectly efficient blackbody (a surface that absorbs all radiant energy falling on it).
Wien obtained his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1886 and soon began to work on the problem of radiation. Although the radiation emitted from a blackbody is distributed over a wide range of wavelengths, there is an intermediate wavelength at which the radiation reaches a maximum. In 1893 Wien stated in his law that this maximum wavelength is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of the body. Because the accuracy of Wien's law declined for longer wavelengths, Max Planck was led to further investigations culminating in his quantum theory of radiation. Selected works Biography: Wilhelm Wien was born in 13 Jan 1864 in Gaffken, East Prussia (now Poland). Died in 30 Aug 1928 in Munich, Germany. It was [Wien's]
idea to use as a good approximation for the ideal blackbody an oven
with a small hole. Any radiation that enters the small hole is scattered
and reflected from the inner walls of the oven so often that nearly
all incoming radiation is absorbed and the chance of some of it finding
its way out of the hole again can be made exceedingly small. The radiation
coming out of this hole is then very close to the equilibrium blackbody
electromagnetic radiation corresponding to the oven temperature. In 1896 Wien derived
a distribution law of radiation. Planck, who was a colleague of Wien's
when he was carrying out this work, later, in 1900, based
quantum theory on the fact that Wien's law, while valid at high frequencies,
broke down completely at low frequencies. 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
E Rutherford in 1919, Wien's particle was accepted and named the proton. Wien received the
1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation. In [4] a letter from
Einstein to Wien is described in which he asks Wien to conduct an experimental
proof of the principle of equivalence which Einstein had proposed from
purely theoretical considerations in 1907:- In 1912
[Einstein] turned by letter to W Wien with the request to
measure the difference between the periods of oscillation of pendulums
made of uranium and lead, as well as the proportionality of inertial
and gravitational masses of a uranium and a lead weight, respectively,
namely with a torsion balance. The letter testifies that Einstein
was not aware of the Eötvös experiment when he formulated
the principle of equivalence ... Other Nobel prize winners:
Wien was appointed professor of physics at the University of Giessen in 1899 and at the University of Munich in 1920. He also made contributions in the study of cathode rays (electron beams), X rays, and canal rays (positively charged atomic beams). His autobiography was published under the title Aus dem Leben und Wirken eines Physikers (1930; "From the Life and Work of a Physicist").
In 1893 Wien stated his
displacement law of blackbody radiation spectra at different temperatures.
His method is described in [2]:-