Gustav Kirchhoff

**Gustav Robert Kirchhoff**
Gustav Kirchhoff Gustav Kirchhoff
Born	12 March 1824(1824--) Königsberg, East Prussia
Died	17 September 1887 (aged 63) Berlin, Germany
Residence	Germany
Nationality	German
Field	Physicist
Institutions	University of Berlin University of Breslau University of Heidelberg
Alma mater	University of Königsberg
Academic advisor	Franz Ernst Neumann
Notable students	Max Noether Ernst Schröder
Known for	Kirchhoff's circuit laws Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation
Notable prizes	Rumford medal

“Kirchhoff” redirects here. For other uses, see Kirchhoff (disambiguation).

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 while studying the chemical composition of the Sun via its spectral signature. 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 (i.e. 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 (i.e. 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.

References

Grave of Gustav Kirchhoff

O'Connor, John J; Edmund F. Robertson "Gustav Kirchhoff". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
Eric W. Weisstein, Kirchhof, Gustav (1824-1887) at ScienceWorld.

Persondata
NAME	Kirchhof, Gustav Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Kirchhoff
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	12 March 1824(1824--)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Königsberg, East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH	17 September 1887
PLACE OF DEATH	Berlin, Germany

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Franz Ernst Neumann

Franz Ernst Neumann
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Max Noether (September 24 1844 - December 13 1921) was a German mathematician. He worked on algebraic geometry and the theory of algebraic functions.

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Ernst Schröder (25 November, 1841 Mannheim, Germany – 16 June, 1902 Karlsruhe Germany) was a German mathematician mainly known for his work on algebraic logic. He is a major figure in the history of mathematical logic (a term he may have invented), by virtue of summarizing
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Not to be confused with Kerckhoffs' principle.

Kirchhoff's circuit laws are a pair of laws that deal with the conservation of charge and energy in electrical circuits, and were first described in 1845 by Gustav Kirchhoff.
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Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation, or Kirchhoff's law for short, is a general statement equating emission and absorption in heated objects, proposed by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1859 (and proved in 1861), following from general considerations of thermodynamic equilibrium.
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Rumford Medal; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences awards the Rumford Prize.

The Rumford Medal is restricted to scientists working in Europe. It is awarded in even years in recognition of an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical
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Kirchhoff, Kirchoff or Kirchhoffer may refer to:

people:

Adolf Kirchhoff (1826–1908), German classical scholar and epigrapher
Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887), German physicist

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electrical network is an interconnection of electrical elements such as resistors, inductors, capacitors, transmission lines, voltage sources, current sources, and switches.
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black body is an object that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation that falls onto it. No radiation passes through it and none is reflected. It is this lack of both transmission and reflection to which the name refers.
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Life and work

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References

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