Heinrich Hertz

Vocation

Notable

Family

German physicist who was the first to broadcast and receive radio waves. He received his Ph.D. magna cum laude from the University of Berlin in 1880, where he studied under Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1883 he began his studies of the electromagnetic theory of James Clerk Maxwell. Between 1885 and 1889, while he was professor of physics at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic, he produced electromagnetic waves in the laboratory and measured their length and velocity. He showed that the nature of their vibration and their susceptibility to reflection and refraction were the same as those of light and heat waves. As a result he established beyond any doubt that light and heat are electromagnetic radiations. In 1889 Hertz was appointed professor of physics at the University of Bonn. His experiments with these electromagnetic waves led to the development of the wireless telegraph and the radio. His name also became the term used for radio and electrical frequencies. In 1892, an infection was diagnosed (after a bout of severe migraines) and Hertz underwent some operations to correct the illness. He died of Wegener's granulomatosis at the age of 36 in Bonn on 1 January 1894, and was buried in Ohlsdorf, Hamburg at the Jewish cemetery. Link to Wikipedia biography