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Births on January 13

Wilhelm Wien
1864Jan, 13

Wilhelm Wien

Wilhelm Wien, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928)
Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈviːn] (listen); 13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.

He also formulated an expression for the black-body radiation, which is correct in the photon-gas limit. His arguments were based on the notion of adiabatic invariance, and were instrumental for the formulation of quantum mechanics. Wien received the 1911 Nobel Prize for his work on heat radiation.

He was a cousin of Max Wien, inventor of the Wien bridge.

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Events on 1864

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    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

    Theta Xi fraternity is founded at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the only fraternity to be founded during the American Civil War.
  • 5May

    Battle of the Wilderness

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  • 7May

    Battle of the Wilderness

    American Civil War: The Army of the Potomac, under General Ulysses S. Grant, breaks off from the Battle of the Wilderness and moves southwards.
  • 7May

    City of Adelaide (1864)

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  • 7Sep

    William Tecumseh Sherman

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