Heinrich Hertz, in full Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, (born February 22, 1857, Hamburg [Germany]—died January 1, 1894, Bonn, Germany), German physicist who showed that Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism was correct and that light and heat are electromagnetic radiations. He received a Ph.D. magna cum laude from the University of Berlin in 1880, where he studied under Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1883 he began his studies of Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. Between 1885…