Josef Stefan

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Josef Stefan
Josef Stefan, bust in the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna
Bust in the Suetschach Culture Park (Carinthia)
Memorial plaque for Josef Stefan at the house where he was born at Ebentalerstraße 88 ⊙ in Klagenfurt
Birthplace

Josef Stefan (Slovenian Jožef Štefan ; born March 24, 1835 in St. Peter near Ebenthal , since 1938 the 10th district of Klagenfurt ; † January 7, 1893 in Vienna ) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist with a Slovene mother tongue from Carinthia.

Life

Slovenian youth

From 1845 to 1853 he attended what is now the European School in Klagenfurt . His mathematical talent was already evident in the lower grammar school levels. When Slovene became a compulsory subject in 1849 as a result of the March Revolution of 1848 on the basis of the October Constitution , the famous Anton Janežič taught him . Stefan was interested in Slovenian and poetry. Together with friends he founded a Slovenian literary circle in which the members borrowed books from Slovenian and Slavic authors from one another. In the year France Prešeren died , they themselves began to write Slovenian poems, including Josef (Jože) Stefan, and published them in the school magazine Slavija . He was interested in the Serbo-Croatian language and, in addition to teaching, studied Latin, Greek and other Slavic languages ​​(Russian, Czech), mathematics and physics.

Professional background

Josef Stefan studied in Vienna from 1853 and completed his habilitation there in 1858 in mathematical physics . In 1859 he took over a teaching position at a secondary school in Vienna. In 1863 he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Vienna and the sick director of the Physics Institute Andreas von Ettingshausen as deputy director, and in 1866 successor and director of the physics institute. From 1875 to 1885 he was secretary of the mathematical and natural science class of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, in 1883 president of the international scientific commission of the electrical exhibition and in 1885 president of the international voice tone conference , which set the normal tone "a" at 435 Hertz. In 1876/77 he was rector of the University of Vienna. Since 1878 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1892 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

He dealt with the propagation of sound, polarization, interference and birefringence of light, the diffusion and heat conduction of gases, the dependence of heat radiation on temperature as well as electrodynamic phenomena and induction.

meaning

Stefan's most famous achievement is the establishment of the radiation law named after him and Boltzmann, the Stefan-Boltzmann law , which describes the relationship between the emitted energy and the temperature of a purely thermally radiating body. When checking all available radiation measurements of highly heated bodies, he found that the amount of energy emitted is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature of the radiator. Soon afterwards, his oldest student Ludwig Boltzmann was able to give a theoretical justification for this empirically found law. The Stefan-Boltzmann constant is named after both . Stefan was the first to use it to determine the temperature of the sun.

He was the first to receive the Lieben Prize in 1865 .

Fonts

Appreciation

The Austrian Association for Electrical Engineering has been awarding the Golden Stefan Medal of Honor in honor of the physicist since 1958, the year of the 75th anniversary of the association . It was awarded 27 times by 2009.

Gottfried Biegelmeier and Heinz Zemanek received this award, for example .

The most important Slovenian institute for basic research, the institute "Jožef Stefan" , is named after him . The Stefan Piedmont Glacier in Antarctica also bears his name.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Untitled. Google Maps , accessed March 14, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 232.
  3. ↑ OVE General Assembly honors deserving members Press front of OVE on May 27, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Stefan, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stefan, Jožef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Peter (Klagenfurt am Wörthersee)
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1893
Place of death Vienna