(1857-1894) German physicist who studied electromagnetic waves, showing that their behavior resembles that of light and heat waves.
Hertz confirmed James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic waves. In 1888, he realized that electric waves could be produced and would travel through air, and he confirmed this experimentally. He went on to determine the velocity of these waves (which were later called radio waves) and, on showing that it was the same as that of light, devised experiments to show that the waves could be reflected, refracted, and diffracted.
Hertz was born in Hamburg and studied at Munich and Berlin. He was professor at Karlsruhe 1885–89 and at Bonn from 1889.
From about 1890, Hertz gained an interest in mechanics. He developed a system with only one law of motion: that the path of a mechanical system through space is as straight as possible and is traveled with uniform motion.
The unit of frequency, the hertz, is named for him.

The unit of frequency measurement; one cycle (of a periodic event such as a waveform) per second. Frequencies of interest in computers and electronic devices are often measured in kilohertz (kHz = 1000 Hz = 103 Hz), megahertz (MHz = 1000 kHz = 106 Hz), gigahertz (GHz = 1000 MHz = 109 Hz), or terahertz (THz = 1000 GHz = 1012 Hz). Abbreviated Hz.
The unit of frequency; one Hertz has a periodic interval of one second; Also called: Hz, cycle per second, cycles/second, cps, cycle.
Units in which frequency is expressed. Synonymous with cycles per second.
unit of frequency, equal to one cycle per second (abbr. Hz.
(science) SI unit (symbol Hz) of frequency (the number of repetitions of a regular occurrence in one second). Radio waves are often measured in megahertz (MHz), millions of hertz, and the clock rate of a computer is usually measured in megahertz. The unit is named for Heinrich Hertz.
(Hz) Term for frequency in musical pitch, corresponding to cycles per second, and named for the German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894). For example, the phrase A 440 Hz means the note A (A4) of the frequency 440 cycles per second.

German physicist who was the first to produce electromagnetic waves artificially (1857-1894).