Happy Kirchhoff Day!

Wait, what? Who? How do you even pronounce that?

With great difficulty!

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was born on the 12th March (that’s right, today!) in 1824 and died on the 17th October 1887. He was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of the black-body radiation by heated objects.

In 1862, he coined the term “black body” radiation, and the Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague, Robert Bunsen.

Kirchhoff also has a fair amount of laws named after him:

• Kirchhoff’s circuit laws

• Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation

• Kirchhoff equations

• Kirchhoff’s three laws of spectroscopy 

• Kirchhoff law of thermochemistry

FOR SCIENCE!