A multi-talented person, he did not choose physics right away, but hesitated deciding among physics, music and philosophy. They say that young Max Planck visited Philipp Jolly and told the scientist about his intention of going in for theoretical physics. “Look, young man,” the eminent scholar said, “Why do you want to ruin your life? Theoretical physics has been almost over. Is there any use in stepping on this dead-end road?” However, the road turned out to be promising. Max Planck turned physics upside down and shaped the line of its development for the whole 20th century. Planck wrote that he had not even thought about founding a new science, but wanted to study in detail the black body radiation. The research led to unexpected results: Planck put forward a hypothesis about quantum nature of radiation and later made sure that it was true. Finally, the quantum theory conquered the world. Everything happened exactly as Planck predicted: the truth was triumphantly marching ahead, while its opponents were dying. In 1918, the truth celebrated the final victory: Planck was awarded with the Nobel Prize “in recognition of his merits to development of physics due to discovery of energy quantum.” Being a profoundly old man, Planck tried to argue with Hitler trying to persuade him to keep Jew alive.
