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Person

Max Planck

A man with curly hair and a beard wearing glasses and a black suit with a bow tie stands against a dark background.

German theoretical physicist who in 1900 introduced the quantum of action, h, to reconcile the observed spectrum of thermal radiation with theory. Planck regarded the discreteness as a mathematical contrivance and spent years hoping it would dissolve into something continuous. Einstein's 1905 paper, by taking light quanta literally, made that escape route impossible. Planck won the 1918 Nobel Prize.

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