Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: Who Was He?

Google is celebrating German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz 155<sup>th birth anniversary by transforming the Google symbol on their home page to a series of colourful waves (in yellow, blue, green and red).

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was the first person who clarified and expanded on the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by James Clerk Maxwell in 1884. His electric waves led to the development of telegraph, radio and television. His name is given to the unit of frequency called Hertz.

Hertz was born on February 22, at Hamburg in Germany. Hertz' father Gustav Ferdinand Hertz was a writer and later a senator. He had three younger brothers and one younger sister. At the age of six he joined a private school. At a very young he had lot of interest in building things. He was also good with languages... both modern and classical. He left Lange's school at fifteen to enter Johanneum Gymnasium, where he was first in his class in Greek. At the same time he took private lessons in Arabic.

In 1875 Hertz went to Frankfurt to prepare for a career in engineering. He spent a year there, in construction bureaus, and reading during his free hours for the state examination in engineering.

After a short spell in 1876 at the Dresden Polytechnic, he put in his year of military service in 1877, with the railway regiment in Berlin. He then moved to Munich with the intention of studying further at the Technische Hochschule. In 1880, Hertz obtained his Ph.D from the University of Berlin and remained there for post-doctoral studies under Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1883, Hertz took a post as a lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Kiel. In 1885, Hertz became a full professor at the University of Karlsruhe where he discovered electromagnetic waves.

The theory of electromagnetism was first published in the form of an essay in 1865. Many of the present day advancements in science are based on this theory.

Hertz died at the age of 37, due to food poisoning.