Max Wien

Who was Max Wien?

Max Wien was a German physicist and the director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Jena. He was born in Königsberg, Prussia. He was a cousin of Nobel laureate Wilhelm Wien.

Wien studied under Helmholtz and Kundt. He invented the "Löschfunkensender" during the years 1906 to 1909 and the Wien bridge in 1891. Many articles incorrectly attribute to Wien the invention of an oscillator bearing his name, but at the time of the invention of his bridge circuit, electronic amplifiers did not exist. William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, was the first to use a Wien bridge as a feedback network around a vacuum tube amplifier to create an oscillator in 1939.

Erwin Schrödinger in his autobiography "Mein Leben, Meine Weltansicht" described Wien as "moderately anti-semitic".

He died in Jena, Germany.