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...