Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck ForMemRS (English: /ˈplæŋk/, German: [maks ˈplaŋk];23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Molecular evidence suggests that the ability to generate electric signals first appeared in evolution some 700 to 800 million years ago, during the Tonian period.
Planck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Holstein (now Schleswig-Holstein), to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig.
After World war II ended, Planck, his second wife, and their son were brought to a relative in Göttingen, where Planck died on October 4, 1947. He was buried in the old Stadtfriedhof (City Cemetery) in Göttingen.