Planck’s Antecedents: Ideas and People in Late 19^th Century Physics

Where did Max Planck come from? Was the idea of quantum radiation a discontinuity in physics or the inevitable consequence of ideas leading up to it? Where did Planck stand prior to 1901 and why did he abandon his deeply held beliefs in continuous matter and radiation? Three areas of physics were advancing rapidly in the late 1800s; thermodynamics, electromagnetic radiation, and statistical mechanics (although the last would not appear as a topic independent of gas theory until 1902). Planck brought them together to bear on the so-called “black radiation” problem, resulting in his thermal radiation distribution function and his Nobel Prize. It took only a few years for the rest of the scientific community to come to terms with his idea.