Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien was born on January 13, 1864, on his family's farm at Gaffken, near Fischhausen, in East Prussia. He was the only child of Carl Wien and the former Caroline Gertz, both descended from land-owning Prussian aristocracy. At his mother's urging, Wien then enrolled at the University of Göttingen to study mathematics and natural science. After only one semester, he became bored and left the university, setting off for an extended vacation through the Rhineland and Thüringen. He returned home once again, to work on the family farm. That commitment lasted only a few months, however, and he headed back to school again in the fall of 1883, this time to the University of Berlin.
His academic experience this time was very different. He came under the tutelage of the great German physicist, mathematician, and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz and received his doctorate 1886. After fire destroyed part of the family's farm, Wien accepted a job as Helmholtz's assistant at the newly established Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Charlottenberg, outside of Berlin. In 1892 Wien was promoted to lecturer at Berlin and then, four years later, he was offered a position as professor of physics at the Technical University in Aachen. He remained at Aachen for three years before moving on to the University of Giessen in 1899 and then to the University of Würzburg in 1900.
Wien's most productive period was the decade of the 1890s, when his main area of interest was the nature of blackbody radiation. The term blackbody refers to a theoretical substance that absorbs all of the radiation that falls on it; the fact that it reflects none of the radiation makes it black. In the 1860s, Gustav Kirchhoff had thoroughly studied the thermal properties of blackbodies. He pointed out that they are a perfect tool for studying radiation since when heated they emit radiation of all wavelengths. This fact makes it possible to study in great detail the nature of radiation emitted at different temperatures.
In about 1893 Wien began a theoretical analysis of the characteristics of blackbody radiation beginning with the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. He eventually developed two important conclusions. The first of these, now known as Wien's displacement law, says that the wavelength of radiation emitted by a blackbody is inversely proportional to the temperature of the body. That is, at low temperatures a blackbody will radiate energy with a long wavelength (red light). As the temperature rises, the most abundant wavelength radiated becomes smaller, and the color of the emitted light changes to orange, yellow, and then white.
Wien next attempted to find a mathematical formula that would fit the empirical graphical representation of the relationship between the amount of energy radiated at each wavelength for various temperatures. He obtained a complex equation that works fairly well at short wavelengths, but not very well at long wavelengths. He published this result in June 1896. In the meantime John W. Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) in England had derived a formula that worked well at long wavelengths, but not at short wavelengths. It was not until Max Planck introduced the concept of a quantum of energy in 1900 that the problem of blackbody radiation was finally solved.
By 1897 Wien had moved on to a new field of interest, cathode rays. Although he completed some excellent studies in this field, he did not produce any major breakthroughs. His two most notable accomplishments were probably his confirmation of the nature of cathode rays as rapidly moving negatively charged particles(1897-98) and of canal rays as rapidly moving positively charged particles (1905). He also carried out some of the earliest studies on the diffraction of X rays by crystals, anticipating the discoveries of Max Laue in this area by at least five years.
Wien's tenure at Würzburg lasted for two decades, during which time he was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on radiation. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Wien was honored with membership in the scientific societies of Berlin, Göttingen, Vienna, and Stockholm. He was also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. From 1906 until his death, he was joint editor with Planck of the prestigious Annalen der Physik and later, with F. Harms, of the Handbuch der Experimental Physik.
Wien was married to Luise Mehler in 1898. They had two sons, Waltraut and Karl, and two daughters, Gerda and Hildegard. He died in Munich on August 30, 1928.
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