Joseph Stefan

Joseph Stefan (Slovene Jožef Štefan, born March 24, 1835 St. Peter Eben Thal (now to Klagenfurt); † January 7, 1893 in Vienna ) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist Slovene mother tongue of Carinthia.

Life

Slovenian youth

Already in the lower secondary school levels, he towered over the substance of mathematics. As in 1849 on the basis of the imposed constitution in March Slovene is a compulsory subject as a result of the March Revolution of 1848, he taught the famous Anton Janežič. Stefan was interested in the Slovenian and poetry. Together with friends, he founded a Slovenian literary circle, in which the members among themselves borrowed books from Slovenian and Slavic authors. In the year of death of Prešeren they started themselves, Josef ( Jože ) Stefan to write Slovenian poems and published them in the school magazine Slavija. He was interested in the Serbo-Croatian language and employed next to the lessons with the Latin, Greek, and other Slavic languages ​​( Russian, Czech), Mathematics and Physics.

Professional career

Josef Stefan studied since 1853 in Vienna and his habilitation in 1858 for mathematical physics. In 1859 he first took over a teaching job at a secondary school in Vienna. In 1863 he became professor of physics at the University of Vienna and the diseased Director of the Physics Institute Andreas von Ettingshausen provided as Deputy Director to the side, and in 1866 successor and Director of the Institute of Physics. From 1875 to 1885 he was secretary of the mathematical sciences faculty of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna, 1883 President of the International Scientific Commission of the Electrical Exhibition in 1885 and president of the international Stimmtonkonferenz which established the normal tone "a" with 435 hertz. 1876/77 he was rector of the University of Vienna.

He dealt with the propagation of sound, polarization, interference and birefringence of light, diffusion and heat conduction of gases, the dependence of thermal radiation on the temperature as well as with electro-dynamic phenomena and the induction.

Importance

The most famous performance Stefans is the preparation of the named after him and Boltzmann radiation law, the Stefan- Boltzmann law, which describes the relationship between the radiated energy and temperature of a purely thermally radiating body. He found upon examination of all the available radiation measurements highly heated body that the radiated energy amount of the fourth power of the absolute temperature of the radiator is proportional. Soon after, his eldest student Ludwig Boltzmann was able to give a theoretical justification of this empirically established law. Named after the two is the Stefan- Boltzmann constant. Stefan has identified as the first so that the temperature of the sun.

He was the first in 1865, the Lieben Prize.

Writings

Appreciation

The Austrian Electrotechnical Association awards since 1958, the year of the 75th anniversary of the Association, in honor of the physicist Stefan the Golden Medal of Honour. By 2009, she was awarded 27 times.

Have received this award, for example, Gottfried Meier Biegel or Heinz Zemanek.

451288
de