Google's latest animated doodle celebrates the 155th birthday of
Heinrich Hertz, the German physicist whose experiments with
electromagnetic waves led to the development of the wireless telegraph
and the radio.
Born in Hamburg, where he demonstrated great skill
in grasping the dynamics of physics even in boyhood, he later enrolled
to study the subject in Berlin following a year at the University of
Munich.
In Berlin, his progress in investigating electromagnetic
phenomena was so rapid that in February 1880 he received his PhD – on
electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres – at the age of 22.
After
becoming a professor at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in 1885, Hertz
turned his attentions to open electrical circuits and demonstrated
electromagnetic induction to his students using a condenser discharging
through an open loop.
In the course of doing this, he noticed an
unanticipated phenomenon, the emergence of 'side-sparks' in another
nearby loop. By 1888, he was able to demonstrate that the
electromagnetic emissions associated with these sparks behaved like
waves.
The finding, which effectively clarified and expanded the
electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by the British
physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1884, was hailed as confirmation that
electromagnetic waves could be transmitted and received.
Hertz's
name later became the term used for radio and electrical frequencies, as
in hertz (Hz), kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).
He died in
Bonn in 1894 after contracting Wegener's granulomatosis, a rare disorder
in which blood vessels become inflamed, and was buried in Ohlsdorf,
Hamburg.
