a German physicist and a professor of physics at the
Polytechnic Institute in Karlsruhe and later at the University of Bonn, gained fame through his
experiments on radio waves. His investigations in the field of elasticity formed a relatively small
part of his achievements but are of vital importance to engineers. His work on the analysis of
elastic bodies in contact is referred to as Hertzian stresses, and is very important in the design of
ball and roller bearings. The unit of frequency of periodic phenomena, measured in cycles per
second, is named hertz in SI units