Gustav Robert Kirchhoff

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff was born to Friedrich Kirchhoff and Johanna Wittke on March 12th, 1824 in Konigberg, Prussia.  He was born into a rising intellectual family and graduated from the University of Konigberg in 1847.  He married Clara Richelot and moved to Berlin, Germany where we worked at Breslau.  While Kirchhoff was still in school he formulated the general ideas for his circuit laws, which later became the subject for his doctoral dissertation, and continued his work at Breslau.   

In 1854, Kirchhoff was invited to the University of Heidelberg to work with Robert Bunsen on spectroscopy.  While they worked together they not only discovered their three laws of spectroscopy they discovered rubidium and cesium.  During the 1860s, Kirchhoff taught a mathematicophysical seminar course at Heidelberg. 

In his later career, Kirchhoff received many awards, one of which was the Rumford Medal for his work on the solar spectrum and the inversion of bright lines in the spectra of artificial light.  In 1875, Kirchhoff was given the first chair ever dedicated to to theoretical physics in Berlin. 

Kirchhoff not only created three laws of spectroscopy but he also created  a law of thermal radiation, two rules of circuits, and a number of equations and formulas. 

In 1887, Kirchhoff died and was buried in St. Matthaus Kirchhoff Cemetery in Schoenberg. 

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