Note the resemblance to the Bohr theory of the atom thirteen years later, where Bohr postulated stationary states of the electron and transitions between those states with the emission or absorption of continuous waves of energy equal to hν! Although the Lorentz theory of the electron was already complete, Planck did not accept electrons and instead described 'the energy flowing across a spherical surface of a certain radius containing the resonator.' He assumed the resonators could be described as having energy values limited to multiples of hν. His quantization assumption was for an ensemble of 'oscillators' or 'resonators' that were emitting and absorbing the radiation.

Planck did not actually believe that light radiation itself existed as light quanta. That was the work of Albert Einstein five years later in his photo-electric effect paper (for which he won the Nobel Prize), in which he proposed his 'light-quantum hypothesis.' For Einstein, the particle equivalent of light (later called a 'photon') contains hν units of energy, where h is Planck's constant and ν is the frequency of the light wave. Planck did not suggest that light actually came in quantized (discrete) bundles of energy. Planck solved the great problem of blackbody radiation by applying the statistical mechanics of the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution law for particles to the distribution of energy in a radiation field. Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Pasco Rakic Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposiumī ν (v, T) = (2 hν 3 / c 2) (1 / ( e hν / kT - 1) )

A survey of physical theory max planck