Everything about Gustav Kirchhoff totally explained
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (
March 12,
1824 –
October 17,
1887) was a
German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of
electrical circuits,
spectroscopy, and the emission of
black-body radiation by heated objects. He coined the term "black body" radiation in
1862, and two sets of independent concepts in both circuit theory and thermal emission are named "
Kirchhoff's laws" after him.
Life and work
Gustav Kirchhoff was born in
Königsberg,
East Prussia, the son of Friedrich Kirchhoff, a lawyer, and Johanna Henriette Wittke. He graduated from the Albertus
University of Königsberg in 1847 where he attended the mathematico-physical seminar directed by
Franz Ernst Neumann and Friedrich Julius Richelot. He married Clara Richelot, the daughter of his mathematics professor Richelot. In the same year, they moved to
Berlin, where he stayed until he received a professorship at
Breslau.
Kirchhoff formulated his
circuit laws, which are now ubiquitous in
electrical engineering, in
1845, while still a student. He completed this study as a seminar exercise; it later became his doctoral dissertation. He proposed his
law of thermal radiation in 1859, and gave a proof in 1861. He was called to the
University of Heidelberg in 1854, where he collaborated in spectroscopic work with
Robert Bunsen. Together Kirchhoff and Bunsen discovered
caesium and
rubidium in 1861. At
Heidelberg he ran a mathematico-physical seminar, modelled on Neumann's, with the mathematician Leo Koenigsberger. Among those who attended this seminar were
Arthur Schuster and
Sofia Kovalevskaya. In 1875 Kirchhoff accepted the first chair specifically dedicated to
theoretical physics at
Berlin.
In 1862 he was awarded the
Rumford Medal for his researches on the fixed lines of the solar spectrum, and on the inversion of the bright lines in the spectra of artificial light.
He contributed greatly to the field of spectroscopy by formalizing three laws that describe the
spectral composition of
light emitted by incandescent objects, building substantially on the discoveries of
David Alter and
Anders Jonas Angstrom (see also:
spectrum analysis)
Kirchhoff's Three Laws of Spectroscopy:
- A hot solid object produces light with a continuous spectrum.
- A hot tenuous gas produces light with spectral lines at discrete wavelengths (for example specific colors) which depend on the energy levels of the atoms in the gas. (See also: emission spectrum)
- A hot solid object surrounded by a cool tenuous gas (for example cooler than the hot object) produces light with an almost continuous spectrum which has gaps at discrete wavelengths depending on the energy levels of the atoms in the gas. (See also: absorption spectrum)
The existence of discrete spectral lines was later explained by the
Bohr model of the atom, which helped lead to
quantum mechanics.
Kirchhoff died in 1887, and was buried in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in
Schöneberg,
Berlin, only a few meters from the graves of the
Brothers Grimm.
Further Information
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