German name for Vienna, the capital of Austria.

(1864-1928) German physicist who studied radiation and established the principle, since known as Wien’s law, that the wavelength at which the radiation from an idealized radiating body is most intense is inversely proportional to the body’s absolute temperature. (That is, the hotter the body, the shorter the wavelength.) For this and other work on radiation, he was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize for Physics.