In 1960 the name of the SI unit for frequency was officially changed from cycles per second (cps) to hertz (Hz). The name was given to honour Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist who first proved the existence of electromagnetic waves.
Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany, into a prosperous family. He was well educated and a talented linguist as well as a good mathematician and physicist. He was also very practically minded, although his first post was as lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Kiel. Whilst at Kiel, Hertz studied Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, which had predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves and that visible light is an example of such waves.
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