22 February: Heinrich Hertz

Today was the birthday of physicist Heinrich Hertz, born in 1857. Here are ten things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in Hamburg, Germany. His father was Gustav Ferdinand Hertz, and his mother was Anna Elisabeth Pfefferkorn.
2. His father's family had converted to Lutheranism from Judaism when his father was a child. Hertz therefore wouldn't have considered himself to be Jewish, but he was Jewish enough for the Nazis to do their best to discredit him. They removed his portrait was removed from its prominent position in Hamburg's City Hall and tried to get the hertz unit of measurement renamed the helmholtz, for Hermann von Helmholtz, one of Hertz's teachers, which meant they could have kept the abbreviation, Hz. The scientific community, however, weren't having it – so the name remained.
3. As a boy, Hertz showed an aptitude for a number of subjects as well as science. He was good at languages, too, and learned Arabic and Sanskrit. He also had an aptitude for woodwork. When his woodwork teacher heard that he had become a professor of physics, he commented: “What a pity! What a fine wood turner he would have made!” The only subject Hertz was bad at was Music. He was excused from singing lessons at school because his singing voice was so bad.
4. He's best known for his work in proving James Clerk Maxwell's theories of electromagnetism. Maxwell had theorised, through mathematics, the functions of Electricity and magnetism. He also predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves. Hertz built a dipole antenna with a spark gap between the elements, and produced Radio waves with it, which he went on to measure. He established that the velocity of the waves was the same as the speed of light. He showed that light and other waves were all a form of electromagnetic radiation which could be defined by Maxwell's equations. He proved that electromagnetic waves can and do move through the air.
5. His work led, ultimately, to telegraphy, radio broadcasting, television, satellite broadcasting, cell phones and radio astronomy. During his lifetime, however, Hertz didn't think his work was of any practical use. "It's of no use whatsoever," he said.
6. Radio waves weren't the only thing he studied. He did a lot of work on contact mechanics, the study of solid matter objects that touch each other, and how they are affected by stress and friction. He also studied a concept called the photoelectric effect, which occurs when an object with electrical charge loses that charge very quickly when it is exposed to light, although he never got around to describing why it happened. It was Albert Einstein who continued the work and provided the explanation. Hertz's studies and Einstein's work eventually became the basis for quantum mechanics. He also developed a graph which could be used to measure humidity in the atmosphere, so weather forecasters have a lot to thank him for, too.
7. In 1886, Hertz married Elisabeth Doll, the daughter of one of his colleagues. She helped and supported him in his work, and also produced two daughters, Johanna and Mathilde. Mathilde went on to become a scientist in her own right – a biologist.
8. Neither daughter married, however, so there are no direct descendants of Heinrich Hertz. However, his nephew, Gustav Hertz won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1925, and Gustav's son, Carl Hellmuth Hertz, invented medical ultrasonography.
9. Hertz was just 36 years old when he died in 1894. His health had been failing for some time, and in a lecture he gave the previous year, he hinted that he might have some inkling he wasn't going to live much longer. “If anything should happen to me," he said. “You should not grieve, but be glad that I will then be one of the chosen ones who live only for a short time and yet live enough. I did not wish for this fate, but I have to be happy with what I am given. If I had a choice to make, I might have chosen this myself.” He died of sepsis after an operation to try and relieve his severe migraines. There's also some evidence that he may have had cancer.
10. In 1930, thirty-six years after Hertz's death, the International Electrotechnical Commission designated the "hertz" as the number of cycles per second of a periodic occurrence. The hertz is used to measure everything from radio waves to CPUs. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awards the IEEE Heinrich Hertz Medal annually to individuals for "achievements which are theoretical or experimental in nature." There's also a crater on the Moon named after him.

Who's That Girl?

Matt Webster lives in a tower block and attends a failing school. He dreams of being a spy like James Bond. Little does he know that he is being watched by someone who can make him into even more than that – a superhero.

His first solo mission is to attend a ball at the Decembrian Embassy and discover who is planning to steal a priceless diamond. While there, he meets the mysterious Lady Antonia du Cane, and is powerfully drawn to her. It soon becomes clear, however, that Lady du Cane is not what she seems. Matt’s quest to discover who she really is almost costs him his career.

A modern day Guy Fawkes gathers a coterie around him with the aim of blowing up Parliament with a nuclear bomb. To achieve this, they need money. Lots of it. Selling the Heart of Decembria Diamond will provide more than enough. All that stands in their way is the Freedom League – but the League is beset by internal disagreements. Can the heroes put their differences aside in time to save the day?

Prime Minister Richard Miller and his wife Fiona grieve for their daughter, Yasmin, who has been missing for three years, and is presumed to be dead. Viper agent Violet Parker could hold the key to what happened to Yasmin, but Violet is accused of giving away the organisation’s secrets. She is to be executed without trial. Will she take her knowledge of what happened to Yasmin with her to her grave?

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-Book