107 years ago today, on December 10, 1918 (November 8, 1918 lunar calendar), Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of quantum theory. Max Planck On December 10, 1918, the eminent German physicist Max Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his revolutionary discovery of the nature of energy. In the 1890s, while teaching at the University of Berlin, Planck wanted to understand why existing formulas could not explain the phenomenon of thermal radiation from hot objects. In 1900 he proposed a new theory that could accurately describe thermal radiation, but this new theory could only be explained by introducing an entirely new concept. This new concept is that heat is not absolutely inseparable from all other forms of energy, on the contrary, it is emitted outward in the form of small clusters. Planck called this bundle of energy "quantum." The word "quantum" comes from Latin and means "how much." Quantum theory was so revolutionary that it was not accepted by the physics community for many years. Planck himself doubted this idea, and he spent years searching for alternative theories, but failed. This theory was accepted after the work of physicists, such as Albert Einstein using quantum theory to explain a phenomenon called the photoelectric effect, and Niels Bohr using quantum theory in 1913 to successfully develop a new way to describe the structure of atoms.