Heinrich Hertz

About Heinrich Hertz

Heinrich Hertz was a pivotal 19th-century German physicist whose brief but brilliant career established a fundamental pillar of modern technology. He is ranked #809 in historical importance due to his conclusive experimental proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves, verifying the theoretical work of James Clerk Maxwell. Hertz's experiments, conducted in the 1880s, successfully generated and detected these waves, demonstrating that light is just one part of the electromagnetic spectrum and paving the way for radio, television, and all subsequent wireless communication. His discovery is honored by naming the SI unit of frequency (the hertz, Hz) after him.

The internet's attention does not seem to fully reflect this foundational importance. In 2025, Hertz garnered 161K Wikipedia views, placing him in a clear position of underattention relative to his historical stature, calculated as an Attention Gap of -2x. To put this into context, a peer in the same field, James Clerk Maxwell, who provided the theory Hertz proved, received over three times as many views (531K) despite a slightly lower importance rank (#881). While Hertz remains more historically significant than Elizabeth (#534) or Huang Xianfan (#130) based on HPI, his 2025 readership lags significantly behind both, showing a substantial disconnect between historical impact and current online focus.

Adding to this trend of fading relevance, Hertz's year-over-year Wikipedia pageviews declined by 19.7% in 2025, and his Q1 vs Q3 momentum showed a further 9% drop, suggesting that his visibility online is continuing to erode.