There is no particular mystery about mathematical analysis; its only distinguishing feature is that it is more trustworthy, more precise, and permits us to proceed farther and along safer lines.Consider, for example, the well-known change of colour from red to white displayed by the light radiated through an aperture made in a heated enclosure, as the temperature increases. From this elementary fact of observation Planck, thanks to mathematical analysis, was able to deduce the existence of light quanta and thence the possibility that all processes of change were discontinuous, and that a body could only rotate with definite speeds. Obviously, commonplace reasoning unaided by mathematics would never have led us even to suspect these extraordinary results.

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About Max Planck

Max Planck was a 19th-century German theoretical physicist. Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the services he rendered to the advancement of physics by his discovery of energy quanta". Read more on Wikipedia →

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