Rudolph Franz (December 16, 1826 in
Berlin – December 31, 1902 in Berlin) was a German physicist.
Life
Franz studied math and natural sciences at the
University of Bonn and got his doctorate in 1850. He started working as a teacher in Berlin the same year.
His research led to his
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
in 1857 at the
Humboldt University of Berlin. Until 1865 he was teaching physical sciences (especially
thermodynamics).
He became known for his collaboration with
Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann, with whom he discovered the
Wiedemann-Franz law in 1853, which relates the
thermal conductivity and
electrical conductivity
Electrical resistivity (also called specific electrical resistance or volume resistivity) is a fundamental property of a material that measures how strongly it resists electric current. A low resistivity indicates a material that readily allow ...
with each other.
Literature
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1826 births
1902 deaths
19th-century German physicists
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