People with a strong Berlin connection - P
- Erwin Piscator Principal Producer of the Berlin Volkstheater during the 1920s. Spent 1931-6 in Russia. Returned to Germany in 1951 and became director of the Berlin Freie Volksbühne.
- Max Planck Born in Kiel, but became Professor at Berlin University. In 1900, he unveiled his quantum theory. Having trouble reconciling black-body radiation with standard theory, he incorporated Boltzmann's new theory on the statistical nature of thermodynamics (although he had previously opposed these ideas vigorously). This produced equations that worked, although it was quite ad-hoc and other physicists did not immediately take these new ideas on board, helped also apparently by the confused way that Planck presented his results. These results anway were announced in the December of 1900.
He received the Nobel Prize in 1918.
The younger of his two sons died in the First World War. He had twin daughters, one of whom died in childbirth. The other twin ended up marrying her sister's husband but she too died in childbirth. In 1944, Planck's house was bombed, destroying all his possessions and much of his work. His last son then became involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed.
- Andre Previn
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