Wilhelm Wien

In 1898, he married Luise Mehler, his longtime lover from Aix-la-Chapelle. They were blessed with four children; Gerda, Hildegard, Karl and Waltraut.

During his years at Würzburg, he embarked on many trips to other European countries including Spain, England, Italy, and Greece. At Würzburg, he also found the time to pursue his life-long interests in History and the Arts.

He died unexpectedly on August 30, 1928 in Munich, Germany, at the age of 64.

He was born on January 13, 1864 in Gaffken near Fischbach, a small town in East Prussia, to Carl Wien, a landowner and his wife, Caroline Gertz. He was their only child.

His family moved to a small farm in Drachenstein when he was a child. He was educated at home until the age of eleven. His parents hired a private tutor, who taught him to speak French.

In 1879, he was enrolled at a school in Rastenburg but was soon expelled from the school due to his poor academic performance. Later in 1880 he attended the city school in Heidelberg and graduated in 1882.

In 1882, he attended the University of Göttingen to study mathematics and natural sciences. In the same year, he also got enrolled at the University of Berlin where he received education in physics.

From 1883 to 1885, he studied at the University of Berlin under the supervision of German physicist and mathematician, Hermann von Helmholtz, and worked in his laboratory.

In 1890, Helmholtz appointed him as his assistant at the newly created State Physical-Technical Institute in Charlotten-burg.

From 1896 to 1899, he served as a lecturer at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University and the University of Giessen.

In 1900, he was appointed the joint professor of physics at the University of Würzburg, as the successor of Wilhelm Roentgen, another German physicist.

In 1902, he was invited to succeed Ludwig Boltzmann as Professor of Physics at the University of Leipzig and in 1906, he was invited to succeed Drude as Professor of Physics at the University of Berlin; but he refused both these invitations.

In 1913-14, he also served as the Rector of the University of Würzburg. In 1913, he visited the United States as a lecturer at the Columbia University.

His best-known contribution to the investigation of thermal radiation is ‘Wien's Displacement Law’, which establishes a relation between the temperature of a Planck Blackbody and the wavelength that manifests maximum radiated power. It states that wavelengths emitted from the blackbody become shorter as the temperature rises.

He also devised a theoretical basis that provided a graphical explanation of the energy distribution curve known as ‘Wien's Energy Distribution Law’. The theory worked well but only for short wavelengths. Later the theory was corrected by Max Planck for short as well as long wavelengths and termed as ‘Planck's law’, which also led to the development of quantum theory.