Wien's displacement law
Ley de desplazamiento de Wien
- Date
- 1893 · confidence high
- Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Credited to
- Wilhelm Wien
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Wien deduces from thermodynamic arguments that the wavelength at which a black body emits most intensely is inversely proportional to its absolute temperature.
Wien was then working at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin, the same institute where Planck would soon formulate his complete radiation law.
What it led to
- Estimation of stellar temperature from colour
- Impetus towards Planck's black-body law (1900)
- Nobel Prize in Physics for Wien (1911)