Google Doodle of Colorful, Animated Wave Commemorates German Physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s 155th Birthday (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 22, 2012
An unusual animated Google doodle today, February 22, 2012, of a colorful, undulating wave on a graph honors German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s 155th birthday.
The scientific term “hertz” comes from the surname of physicist Hertz, born February 22, 1857 in Hamburg, German Confederation — he was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures that ruled out all other known wireless phenomena. His last name was used in naming the hertz (Hz), kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz). The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications. Additionally, a crater that lies on the far side of the moon is named in his honor.
Hertz is credited for being the first person to broadcast and receive radio waves, which contributed to the development and inventions of radio, wireless telegraph, and television.
Sadly, he died prematurely at age 36 in 1894 from Wegener’s granulomatosis, an incurable form of vasculitis (inflammation of blood vessels) that affects the nose, lungs, kidneys, and other organs.
Google Doodle for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s 155th Birthday
From The Guardian, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz celebrated in a Google doodle:
Google’s latest animated doodle celebrates the 155th birthday of Heinrich Hertz, the German physicist whose experiments with electromagnetic waves led to the development of the wireless telegraph and the radio.
Born in Hamburg, where he demonstrated great skill in grasping the dynamics of physics even in boyhood, he later enrolled to study the subject in Berlin following a year at the University of Munich.
In Berlin, his progress in investigating electromagnetic phenomena was so rapid that in February 1880 he received his PhD – on electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres – at the age of 22.
After becoming a professor at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in 1885, Hertz turned his attentions to open electrical circuits and demonstrated electromagnetic induction to his students using a condenser discharging through an open loop.
In the course of doing this, he noticed an unanticipated phenomenon, the emergence of ‘side-sparks’ in another nearby loop. By 1888, he was able to demonstrate that the electromagnetic emissions associated with these sparks behaved like waves.
The finding, which effectively clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1884, was hailed as confirmation that electromagnetic waves could be transmitted and received.
Hertz’s name later became the term used for radio and electrical frequencies, as in hertz (Hz), kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).
German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
From The Telegraph, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz’s birthday marked with Google doodle wave:
The search engine’s logo on its home page has been replaced with a moving image of waves on a graph, in recognition of the German physicist’s pioneering work on electromagnetic waves.
The waves depicted in the Google doodle are in Google’s trademark colours – red, blue, yellow and green.
Hertz’s experiments made him the first person to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves, which later led to the development of the wireless telegraph, radio and eventually television.
Born in Hamburg in 1857, Hertz demonstrated an aptitude for sciences from a young age and went on to study under the physicists Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz in Dresden, Munich and Berlin.
At the University of Berlin, his progress was so rapid that in 1880, at the age of just 22, he obtained his PhD on electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres.
Five years later he became a professor at the University of Karlsruhe, where he discovered electromagnetic waves.
From CS Monitor, How Heinrich Rudolf Hertz revealed the invisible world:
…Like many of Google’s best doodles, this wave logo holds a double meaning. Sure, it winks at Hertz’s history in electromagnetism (we’ll explain all of that in a moment). But the undulating curves also hide a message, one you may never notice unless you take the time to look.
The waves form a repeating pattern: There’s a large blue curve, followed by a shallow red, shallow yellow, deep blue, skinny green, and one final red curve. Those lines match the general shape of Google’s traditional logo: Uppercase blue G, small Os, a lowercase g, a skinny green L, and a red E. It’s not the most difficult code to decipher, but Google’s doodle serves as a lovely metaphor for Hertz’s work.
Namely, Hertz earned his fame by discovering what had always been there.
[...]
By allowing the world to finally see these invisible forces, Hertz became famous. The International Electrotechnical Commission decided in 1930 that his name would become a unit of frequency. The hertz (or Hz) measures “cycles per second.” For example, a 60 Hz TV runs at up to 60 frames per second.
Despite this global fame, the Nazis tried to expunge Hertz’s name from history. While Hertz identified as a Lutheran, his father grew up as a Jew.
“Hertz’s reputation was actively denigrated by the Nazis, who forced his wife and daughters to flee Germany because, despite strong Lutheran roots, they were considered Jews,” writes the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in its profile of Hertz.
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