Otto Richard Lummer (17 July 1860 – 5 July 1925) was a German physicist and researcher. He was born in the city of

Gera Gera is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the ''Thüringer Städtekette'', an almost straight string of cit ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. With Leon Arons, Lummer helped to design and build the Arons–Lummer

mercury-vapor lamp A mercury-vapor lamp is a gas-discharge lamp that uses an electric arc through vaporized mercury to produce light. The arc discharge is generally confined to a small fused quartz arc tube mounted within a larger soda lime or borosilicate gl ...

. Lummer primarily worked in the field of

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...

and

thermal radiation Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of particles in matter. Thermal radiation is generated when heat from the movement of charges in the material (electrons and protons in common forms of matter) i ...

. Lummer's findings, along with others, on black body radiators led

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

to reconcile his earlier

Planck's law In physics, Planck's law describes the spectral density of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body in thermal equilibrium at a given temperature , when there is no net flow of matter or energy between the body and its environment. At ...

of black-body radiation by introducing the

quantum hypothesis Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...

in 1900. In 1903, with

Ernst Gehrcke Ernst J. L. Gehrcke (1 July 1878 in Berlin – 25 January 1960 in Hohen-Neuendorf) was a German experimental physicist. He was director of the optical department at the Reich Physical and Technical Institute. Concurrently, he was a professor at th ...

, he developed the Lummer–Gehrcke interferometer. Lummer died in former Breslau, now

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, r ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lummer, Otto 1860 births 1925 deaths People from Gera 19th-century German physicists 20th-century German physicists