His intellectual capacities were, however, brought to a focus as the result of his independent study, especially of Rudolf Clausius' writings on thermodynamics. During his Wanderjahr (1877-78) at the University of Berlin, he was unimpressed by the lectures of Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, despite their eminence as research scientists. Planck entered the University of Munich in the fall of 1874 but found little encouragement there from physics professor Philipp von Jolly. He also loved the outdoors, taking long walks each day and hiking and climbing in the mountains on vacations, even in advanced old age. He possessed the gift of absolute pitch and was an excellent pianist who daily found serenity and delight at the keyboard, enjoying especially the works of Schubert and Brahms. Music, nonetheless, remained an integral part of his life. He ultimately chose physics over classical philology or music because he had dispassionately reached the conclusion that it was in physics that his greatest originality lay. But Planck excelled in all subjects, and after graduation at age 17 he faced a difficult career decision. When Planck was nine years old, his father received an appointment at the University of Munich, and Planck entered the city's renowned Maximilian Gymnasium, where a teacher, Hermann Müller, stimulated his interest in physics and mathematics. The long family tradition of devotion to church and state, excellence in scholarship, incorruptibility, conservatism, idealism, reliability, and generosity became deeply ingrained in Planck's own life and work. Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on April 23, 1858, in Kiel, Germany, the sixth child of a distinguished jurist and professor of law at the University of Kiel. Both have forced man to revise some of his most cherished philosophical beliefs, and both have led to industrial and military applications that affect every aspect of modern life. Together they constitute the fundamental theories of 20th-century physics. This theory revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity revolutionized our understanding of space and time. Max Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame rests primarily on his role as originator of the quantum theory. (an information service from the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica) Following is a full text article from Britannica Online
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