Max Planck, the sixth child of a third generation university professor, is born in Kiel, Germany where his father is teaching. Max will go to become a professor of physics, play the key role in developing the the theory of quantum mechanics, and emerge as perhaps the leading physicist of the nineteenth century (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
J. L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 1-3.