Anniversary 200th birthday of Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
The Kirchhoff Institute for Physics (KIP) at Heidelberg University is named after him: The physicist Gustav Robert Kirchhoff would have been 200 years old on 12 March 2024. The co-founder of spectral analysis, who taught and researched at Ruperto Carola from 1854 to 1874 and died in 1887, is one of the most important physicists of the 19th century.
During his time in Heidelberg, he discovered spectral analysis together with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and its application to solar radiation, with which Kirchhoff founded astrophysics. He also formulated the law of radiation, which became the gateway to quantum physics, in Heidelberg. Kirchhoff's theoretical and experimental research is extraordinarily diverse and encompasses electrical, magnetic, optical, elastic, hydrodynamic and thermal processes. His famous lectures on experimental and theoretical physics attracted many students to Ruperto Carola. Every semester, he held his lecture on experimental physics every day from 11 am to 12 noon.
