Heinrich Rudolph Hertz' 156 th Birthday.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who clarified and expanded James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, which was first demonstrated by David Edward Hughes using non-rigorous trial and error procedures. Hertz is distinguished from Maxwell and Hughes because he was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures that ruled out all other known wireless phenomena. The scientific unit of frequency – cycles per second – was named the "hertz" in his honor.

Legacy and honors

Heinrich Hertz' nephew Gustav Ludwig Hertz was a Nobel Prize winner, and Gustav's son Carl Helmut Hertz invented medical ultrasonography.
The SI unit hertz (Hz) was established in his honor by the IEC in 1930 for frequency, an expression of the number of times that a repeated event occurs per second. It was adopted by the CGPM (Conférence générale des poids et mesures) in 1960, officially replacing the previous name, the "cycle per second" (cps).
In 1969 (East Germany), a Heinrich Hertz memorial medal^[ was cast. The IEEE Heinrich Hertz Medal, established in 1987, is "for outstanding achievements in Hertzian waves [...] presented annually to an individual for achievements which are theoretical or experimental in nature".

Heinrich Hertz

1. A crater that lies on the far side of the Moon, just behind the eastern limb, is named in his honor. 
2. The Hertz market for radio electronics products in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, is named after him. 
3. The Heinrich-Hertz-Turm radio telecommunication tower in Hamburg is named after the city's famous son.
4. Hertz is honored by Japan with a membership in the Order of the Sacred Treasure, which has multiple layers of honor for prominent people, including scientists.
5. Heinrich Hertz has been honored by a number of countries around the world in their postage issues, and in post-World War II times has appeared on various German stamp issues as well.

On his birthday in 2012, Google honored Hertz with a Google doodle, inspired by his life's work, on its home page.