Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers

In this fascinating autobiography from the foremost genius of twentieth-century physics, Max Planck tells the story of his life, his aims, and his thinking.Published posthumously, the papers in this volume were written for the general reader and make accessible his scientific theories as well as his philosophical ideals, including his thoughts on ethics and morals. Max (Karl Ernst Ludwig) Planck was a German physicist and philosopher known for his quantum theory, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.Planck was born in Kiel, Germany, in 1858 to an academic family, and he valued education from a young age.He attended the Universities of Munich and Berlin to study physics under the great scientific leaders Kirchhoff and Helmholtz.His early work mainly focused on the study of thermodynamics, and in 1900 he published a paper on his quantum theory that would change the face of modern physics.Planck worked as a professor at Berlin University his entire life, and he also served