How did Rudolf Clausius influence Max Planck’s early scientific work?

Rudolf Clausius significantly influenced Max Planck’s early scientific development through his foundational writings on thermodynamics. During his university years, Planck found little inspiration in the lectures of his professors, but his intellectual focus sharpened considerably through his independent study of Clausius’s work.1

This engagement was pivotal for Planck, as he became deeply convinced that the entropy law—the second law of thermodynamics—was an absolute law of nature. This conviction formed the core of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Munich and served as the essential starting point for the research that eventually led Planck to discover the quantum of action, now known as Planck’s constant, in 1900.1