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Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( February 22, 1857 - January 1, 1894), was the German physicist for whom the hertz, the SI unit of frequency, is named. In 1888, he was the first to demonstrate the existence of electromagnetic radiation by building apparatus to produce radio waves. Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a Jewish family that had converted to Christianity. His father was an advocate in Hamburg, his mother the daughter of a doctor. While at school, he showed an aptitude for sciences as well as languages, learning Arabic and Sanskrit. He studied sciences and engineering in the German cities of DresdenDresden [ˈdreːsdn̩] ( Sorbian/Lusatian Drjezdzany , the capital city of the German federal state of Saxony, is situated in a valley on the river Elbe. The city’s population stood at 478,000 in 2004. At the same time, the total populat, MunichMunich ( German: Munchen ) is the state capital of the German Bundesland of Bavaria. Behind Berlin and Hamburg, Munich is Germany's third largest city with a population of about 1. 261 million ( as of 2003). It is located on the river Isar. History The se and BerlinBerlin [ bɛrˈliːn ] is the national capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,387,404 inhabitants (as of September 2004); down from 4. 5 million before World War II. Berlin is located on the rivers Spree and Havel in the northea. He was a student of Gustav R. Kirchhoff and Hermann von HelmholtzHermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz ( August 31, 1821 September 8, 1894) was a German physician and physicist. Helmholtz was the son of a gymnasium headmaster, Ferdinand Helmholtz, who had studied classical philology and philosophy, and who was a close. He obtained his PhD in 1880Events January 1 Construction of the Panama Canal begins February 2 The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana February 13 Thomas Edison becomes the second person to observe the Edison Effect. February 17 Bomb explodes in Winter Palace, and remained a pupil of Helmholtz until 1883 when he took a post as a lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of KielThe University of Kiel in full the Christian-Albrechts-Universitat zu Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 in order to train priests and government officials. It was one of the first universities to obey the Gleichscha. In 1885 he became a full professor at the University of Karlsruhe where he discovered electromagnetic waves.
Following Michelson's 1881 experiment (precursor to the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment) which disproved the existence of luminiferous aether, he reformulated Maxwell's equations to take the new discovery into account. Through experimentation, he proved that electric signals can travel through open air, as had been predicted by James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday, and which is the basis for the invention of radio. He also discovered the photoelectric effect (which was later explained by Albert Einstein) when he noticed that a charged object loses its charge more readily when illuminated by ultraviolet light.
He died in Bonn, Germany.
His nephew Gustav Ludwig Hertz was a Nobel Prize winner, and Gustav's son Carl Hellmuth Hertz invented medical ultrasonography.
