ABSTRACT
TT JL J L e i n r i c h R u d o l f H e r t z was bom in Hamburg on February 22, 1857. During his elementary and secondary education he was recognized as a very bright student with a broad interest ranging over languages (including Greek, Arabic, and Sanskrit), literature, philoso phy, mathematics, and physics. He first studied engineering after finishing high school, but soon gave up this field in favor of physics, going to Berlin to study under Kirchhoff and von Helmholtz. He be came Privatdocent in physics in Kiel in 1883, also beginning his studies of Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory at that time. By 1885 he was professor of physics at the Higher Institute for Technology at Karlsruhe, where for the next four years he continued his investiga tions in connection with the production, propagation, and reception of radio waves and other electromagnetic phenomena. In 1889 Hertz was appointed to succeed Clausius as ordinarius professor of physics in Bonn; shortly after his arrival there he became seriously ill. An un successful operation left him unable to pursue his experimental in vestigations, and so he decided to devote himself to the study of the basic concepts and principles of physics, a course which ultimately led to his famous work, The Principles o f Mechanics (1894). After a long and painful illness he died in Bonn on January 1, 1894.
