Wilhelm Wien |
As Max von Laue wrote of Wien, "his immortal glory" was that he "led us to the very gates of quantum physics".
Wien was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1911.
Wien was born at Fischhausen, in East Prussia as the son of landowner Carl Wien. In 1866, his family moved to Drachstein, in Rastenburg, East Prussia.
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.
Early Life
Education