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Gustav Robert Kirchhoff

Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff.jpg
Gustav Kirchhoff
Born Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
(1824-03-12)12 March 1824
Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia
(present-day Kaliningrad, Russia)
Died 17 October 1887(1887-10-17) (aged 63)
Berlin, Prussia, German Empire
(present-day Germany)
Residence Prussia/German Empire
Nationality Prussian (until 1871)
German (after 1871)
Fields Physics
Chemistry
Institutions University of Berlin
University of Breslau
University of Heidelberg
Alma mater University of Königsberg
Doctoral advisor Franz Ernst Neumann
Otto Hesse
Notable students Loránd Eötvös
Edward Nichols
Gabriel Lippmann
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
Max Planck
Jules Piccard
Max Noether
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Ernst Schröder
Known for Kirchhoff's circuit laws
Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation
Kirchhoff's laws of spectroscopy
Kirchhoff's law of thermochemistry
Notable awards Rumford medal (1862)
Davy Medal (1877)
Matteucci Medal (1877)
Janssen Medal (1887)

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (German: [ˈkɪʁçhɔf]; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 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 different sets of concepts (one in circuit theory, and one in spectroscopy) are named "" after him; there is also a Kirchhoff's Law in thermochemistry. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague, Robert Bunsen.

Gustav Kirchhoff was born in Königsberg, 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 Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi,Franz Ernst Neumann and Friedrich Julius Richelot. In the same year, he moved to Berlin, where he stayed until he received a professorship at Breslau. Later, in 1857, He married Clara Richelot, the daughter of his mathematics professor Richelot. The couple had five children. Clara died in 1869. He married Luise Brömmel in 1872.

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. In 1857 he calculated that an electric signal in a resistanceless wire travels along the wire at the speed of light. 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.


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