Heinrich Hertz

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) was born February 22, 1857 in Hamburg and died January 1, 1894 in Bonn. He studied sciences and engineering in Dresden, Munich and Berlin. He was a student of Gustav R. Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz. He became one of the well known physicists of the 19th century.

His experiments proved that electric signals can travel through open air, as had been predicted by James Maxwell and Michael Faraday, which is the basis for the invention of radio. The unit hertz to measure frequency is named after him.

See also Hans Christian Ørsted, Guglielmo Marconi.

Reference: Short biography