Google Doodle celebrates German physicist Heinrich Hertz
German physicist Heinrich Hertz has been honored with his very own wavy Google Doodle on what would have been his 155th birthday.
In case you aren’t sure just what old Heinrich is responsible for, here is a hint: The metric unit Hertz (Hz), which stands for the number of cycles per second of any kind of phenomena, and is frequently used to describe radio and audio waves, is named after him.
Noticing a wAvY theme here?
Hertz, who was born on Feb. 22 in 1857, was the first person to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves back in the late 1880s, and it was his experiments with electromagnetic waves that paved the way for the invention of radio, television and radar -- what we now know as the “wireless age.”
Amazingly, he did all of this before his death at the age of 36 from Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare disease that results in the inflammation of the blood vessels.
The Washington Post reports that the artist behind Wednesday’s Doodle is Sophia Foster-Diminio, who was also responsible for a rather impenetrable Doodle celebrating the work of French mathematician Pierre de Fermat.
For this Doodle, Foster-Diminio kept the concept simple and elegant--just a moving wavy line depicted in Google’s trademark colors.
Google casts its net wide when it looks for people, ideas and holidays to celebrate in its quirky doodles.
Other scientists who have been honored by Google in a Doodle include Edmond Halley, Gregor Mendel, Thomas Edison and Marie Curie.
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