14 Facts About Gustav Kirchhoff

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.

Gustav Kirchhoff was born on 12 March 1824 in Konigsberg, Prussia, the son of Friedrich Kirchhoff, a lawyer, and Johanna Henriette Wittke.

Gustav Kirchhoff's family were Lutherans in the Evangelical Church of Prussia.

Gustav Kirchhoff graduated from the Albertus University of Konigsberg in 1847 where he attended the mathematico-physical seminar directed by Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, Franz Ernst Neumann and Friedrich Julius Richelot.

Gustav Kirchhoff formulated his circuit laws, which are now ubiquitous in electrical engineering, in 1845, while still a student.

Gustav Kirchhoff completed this study as a seminar exercise; it later became his doctoral dissertation.

Gustav Kirchhoff was called to the University of Heidelberg in 1854, where he collaborated in spectroscopic work with Robert Bunsen.

Gustav Kirchhoff proposed his law of thermal radiation in 1859, and gave a proof in 1861.

Gustav Kirchhoff 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.

In 1875 Gustav Kirchhoff accepted the first chair dedicated specifically to theoretical physics at Berlin.

Gustav Kirchhoff contributed to optics, carefully solving the wave equation to provide a solid foundation for Huygens' principle.

Gustav Kirchhoff died in 1887, and was buried in the St Matthaus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schoneberg, Berlin.

Gustav Kirchhoff did not know about the existence of energy levels in atoms.

Gustav Kirchhoff showed in 1858 that, in thermochemistry, the variation of the heat of a chemical reaction is given by the difference in heat capacity between products and reactants:.