Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.
Wien in 1911
In physics, Wien's displacement law states that the black-body radiation curve for different temperatures will peak at different wavelengths that are inversely proportional to the temperature. The shift of that peak is a direct consequence of the Planck radiation law, which describes the spectral brightness or intensity of black-body radiation as a function of wavelength at any given temperature. However, it had been discovered by German physicist Wilhelm Wien several years before Max Planck developed that more general equation, and describes the entire shift of the spectrum of black-body radiation toward shorter wavelengths as temperature increases.
Blacksmiths work iron when it is hot enough to emit plainly visible thermal radiation.
The color of a star is determined by its temperature, according to Wien's law. In the constellation of Orion, one can compare Betelgeuse (T ≈ 3300 K, upper left), Rigel (T = 12100 K, bottom right), Bellatrix (T = 22000 K, upper right), and Mintaka (T = 31800 K, rightmost of the 3 "belt stars" in the middle).
