"Another result of this law... When a space is surrounded by bodies of the same temperature, and no rays can penetrate through these bodies, every pencil in the interior of the space is so constituted, with respect to its quality and intensity, as if it proceeded from a perfectly black body of the same temperature, and is therefore independent of the nature and form of the bodies, and only determined by the temperature. The truth... is evident if we consider that a pencil of rays, which has the same form, but the reverse direction to that chosen, is completely absorbed by the infinite number of reflections which it successively experiences at the assumed bodies. In the interior of an opaque glowing hollow body of given temperature there is, consequently, always the same brightness whatever its nature may be in other respects."
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Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.
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