Marian Smoluchowski
| Marian Smoluchowski | |
|---|---|
Marian Ritter von Smolan Smoluchowski
|
|
| Born |
28 May 1872 Vorder-Brühl, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 5 September 1917 (aged 45) Kraków, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria |
| Residence | Austria-Hungary |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Fields | Physicist |
| Institutions |
University of Lviv Jagellonian University |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Doctoral advisor | Franz S. Exner and Joseph Stefan |
| Doctoral students |
|
| Known for | Pioneering statistical physics Smoluchowski equation Einstein-Smoluchowski relation Smoluchowski coagulation equation Smoluchowski factor |
| Notable awards | Haitinger Prize of the Vienna Academy of Sciences (1908) |
Marian Smoluchowski (Polish: [ˈmarjan smɔluˈxɔfski]; 28 May 1872 – 5 September 1917) was a Polish physicist who worked in the Polish territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a pioneer of statistical physics, and an avid mountaineer.
Born into an upper-class family in Vorder-Brühl, near Vienna, Smoluchowski studied physics at the University of Vienna. His teachers included Franz S. Exner and Joseph Stefan. Ludwig Boltzmann held a position at Munich University during Smoluchowski's studies in Vienna, and Boltzmann returned to Vienna in 1894 when Smoluchowski was serving in the Austrian army. They apparently had no direct contact, although Smoluchowski's work follows in the tradition of Boltzmann's ideas.
After several years at other universities (Paris, Glasgow, Berlin), in 1899 Smoluchowski moved to Lwów (present-day Lviv), where he took a position at the University of Lwów. He was president of the Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists, 1906–7.
In 1913 Smoluchowski moved to Kraków to take over a chair in the Experimental Physics Department, succeeding August Witkowski, who had long envisioned Smoluchowski as his successor. When World War I began the following year, the work conditions became unusually difficult, as the spacious and modern Physics Department building, built by Witkowski a short time before, was turned into a military hospital. The possibility of working in that building had been one of the reasons Smoluchowski had decided to move to Kraków. Smoluchowski was now forced to work in the apartment of the late Professor Karol Olszewski. During his lectures in experimental physics, use of even the simplest demonstration equipment was virtually impossible.
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