Gustav Kirchhoff
(Königsberg, Prussia, 1824-Berlin, 1887) German physicist.A close collaborator of chemist Robert Bunsen, he applied spectrographic analysis methods (based on the analysis of radiation emitted by an energetically excited body) to determine the composition of the Sun.
Gustav Kirchhoff
In 1845 he enunciated the so-called Kirchhoff laws, applicable to the calculation of voltages, intensities and resistances in the yes of an electrical mesh; understood as an extension of the law of conservation of energy, they were based on the theory of physicist Georg Simon Ohm, according to which the voltage that causes the passage of an electric current is proportional to the intensity of the current.
In 1847 he served as a Privatdozent (non-salaried professor) at the University of Berlin, and after three years he accepted the post of professor of physics at the University of Breslau.In 1854 he was appointed professor at the University of Heidelberg, where he befriended Robert Bunsen.Thanks to the collaboration between the two scientists, the first spectrographic analysis techniques were developed, which led to the discovery of two new elements in 1860 and 1861, cesium and rubidium (atomic numbers 55 and 37 in the periodic table of elements).
In his attempt to determine the composition of the Sun, Kirchhoff found that, when light passes through a gas, it absorbs the wavelengths that it would emit if it were previously heated.He successfully applied this principle to explain the many dark lines that appear in the solar spectrum, known as Fraunhofer lines.This discovery marked the beginning of a new era in the field of astronomy.
In 1875 he was appointed professor of mathematical physics at the University of Berlin.He published a number of scientific works, including Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik (1876-1894) and Gessamelte Abhandlungen (1882, expanded with a supplement in 1891).
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