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A portrait of Jožef Stefan. Print. K. Schoenbauer.
CREATIVE RESEARCHER
Jožef Stefan was born on 24 March 1835 to
Slovenian parents in St. Peter in Carinthia, which
is now a part of the Municipality of Klagenfurt.
He attended secondary school in Klagenfurt and
studied mathematics and physics at the Univer-
sity of Vienna from 1853 to 1858. He remained
there after he completed his doctorate and in
He was involved in all areas of
physics existing at the time: me-
chanics, hydrodynamics, acous-
tics, thermodynamics, kinetic the-
ory of gases, electromagnetism,
and optics, but it was in thermo-
dynamics and thermal radiation
theory that he made his greatest
contributions to science. The na-
tional elementary and secondary
school competition in physics is
named after Stefan.
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1860 became a corresponding member of the
Austrian Academy of Sciences and, three years
later, the youngest university professor in Aus-
tria. In 1866 he was appointed the director of the
Physical Institute at the University of Vienna.
In the subsequent years he focused on the
fast-developing areas of electricity and mag-
netism. He created a state-of- the-art laborato-
ry, founded the Austrian Electrical Engineering
Association, and presided over the scientific and
technical commission of the Vienna Interna-
tional Electrical Exhibition in 1883. He died on 7
January 1893 in Vienna, where he is buried.