Planck (Max Planck)

Max Planck was a physicist who revolutionized our understanding of energy. He discovered that energy isn’t continuous but comes in tiny, discrete units called "quanta." This idea, called "quantization," explained how blackbody radiation (the glow emitted by heated objects) behaves. His work introduced the constant named after him, Planck’s constant, which determines the size of these energy packages. This breakthrough laid the foundation for quantum physics, revealing that at very small scales, energy operates differently than our everyday experience suggests. Essentially, Planck showed that the universe has a fundamental smallest unit of energy, changing how we understand the nature of reality.