Life and Work

Otto Wiener was a son of Christian Wiener and Pauline Hausrath. Orphan of mother at the age of 3, he married Lina Fenner at 32.
He was a pupil of August Kundt

August Kundt

August Adolf Eduard Eberhard Kundt was a German physicist.-Biography:Kundt was born at Schwerin in Mecklenburg. He began his scientific studies at Leipzig, but afterwards went to Berlin University. At first he devoted himself to astronomy, but coming under the influence of H. G...

 at the University of Strasbourg, where he received his doctorate in 1887 with a thesis on the phase change of light upon reflection, and methods to determine the thickness of thin films.
Wiener is known for the experimental proof of standing

Standing wave

In physics, a standing wave – also known as a stationary wave – is a wave that remains in a constant position.This phenomenon can occur because the medium is moving in the opposite direction to the wave, or it can arise in a stationary medium as a result of interference between two waves traveling...

 light waves. In 1890 he succeeded in determining the wavelength

Wavelength

In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a...

 of light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

.

He was professor at the University of Giessen

University of Giessen

The University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...

 from 1895.
In 1899 he became professor at the Physics Institute of the University of Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

, where he succeeded Gustav Wiedemann. Together with Theodor des Coudres

Theodor des Coudres

Theodor des Coudres was a German physicist.Theodor des Coudres was the son of Julius des Coudres and his wife Anna Henrietta Rosenstock...

, he built an excellent physical institute there, and appointed Peter Debye

Peter Debye

Peter Joseph William Debye FRS was a Dutch physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.-Early life:...

 and Gregor Wentzel

Gregor Wentzel

Gregor Wentzel was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926...

.

In his academic inaugural lecture at Leipzig of 1900 on The Extension of our Senses, he presented the theory of physical education in the context of evolutionary theory

History of evolutionary thought

Evolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...

. He took up Heinrich Hertz's theory that separates internal images —a conceptualization of reality— from descriptions of experiment(Principles of Mechanics, 1894). It was the dawn of media technology. Wiener added to Hertz's work, and theorized cinematography as an extension of our senses (1900).

The Standing Lightwaves Experiment

Otto Wiener's fame is mostly due to the experiment where he visualized light waves in steady conditions. Although it could considered equivalent to Hertz's detection of radio waves, their intent differed. Hertz aimed at validating Maxwell's theory, while Wiener's purpose was to determine the plane of vibration light waves, as they were conceived in mechanical theory. Note that both scientists, like most of their contemporaries, assumed the existence of aether. With the rise of quantum mechanics, the concept of luminous field changed dramatically. Nowadays, quantum optics replaced the problem of visualizing light waves with that of simultaneously measuring their phase and amplitude.

Drude's critique

Wiener's film was transparently thin, about 2x10⁻⁶ cm, exposed to carbon arc light. He added benzene to the wedge after having been criticized for not considering the possibility of having photographed thin-film interference fringes rather than standing waves. His interpretation validated Fresnel

Augustin-Jean Fresnel

Augustin-Jean Fresnel , was a French engineer who contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behaviour of light both theoretically and experimentally....

's interpretation rather than Neumann

Franz Ernst Neumann

Franz Ernst Neumann was a German mineralogist, physicist and mathematician.-Biography:Neumann was born in Joachimsthal, Margraviate of Brandenburg, located not far from Berlin. In 1815 he interrupted his studies at Berlin to serve as a volunteer in the Hundred Days against Napoleon, and was...

's. Paul Drude criticized Wiener for this. With Nernst

Walther Nernst

Walther Hermann Nernst FRS was a German physical chemist and physicist who is known for his theories behind the calculation of chemical affinity as embodied in the third law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry...

, he repeated Wiener's experiment using a fluorescent film as detector, in order to prove that the effect was due to electric fields.

Relationship with interferential photografy

A photographic experiment for validating Fresnel's theory had already been suggested by Wilhelm Zenker (1829-1899), after a call by the French Academy of Sciences

French Academy of Sciences

The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...

 in 1865. Zenker's proposal didn't delve into the thikness of the film, though. By exposing a thicker film, to be observed by reflection rather than by transparency, Gabriel Lippmann

Gabriel Lippmann

Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann was a Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and inventor, and Nobel laureate in physics for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference....

 discovered interferential color photography, which he was awarded the Nobel prize for. Wiener contributed to Lippmann's theory thereafter.

Further repetitions of the experiment

Repetition of the experiment under different conditions was carried out by Leistner, a Wiener's student, to better characterize the radiation. Leistner modified a Mach–Zehnder interferometer so as to insert the film between the mirrors. Another repetition was the thesis of Ernst Schult, commissioned by Nernst and Max von Laue

Max von Laue

Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals...

 for comparing light intensity with the energy as measured with a micropyrometer

Pyrometer

A pyrometer is a non-contacting device that intercepts and measures thermal radiation, a process known as pyrometry.This device can be used to determine the temperature of an object's surface....

, along the verification of the energy quantization hypothesis with respect to the simple wave theory. A further notable repetition, aimed at evaluating the dependence of a cesium film's photoelectric emission upon illumination conditions. Ives and Fry controlled bands formation using a thicker film to be dissected upon development. More recent repetitions avail of laser technology.

External links

• Classic Science Paper: Otto Wiener’s experiment (1890), Skulls in the Stars