A Concise History of the Black-body Radiation Problem

The way the topic of black-body radiation is presented in most of the standard textbooks (i.e., from Rayleigh–Jeans to Max Planck) does not follow the actual historical timeline of the understanding of the black-body radiation problem. Authors believe that a presentation that follows an actual time-line of the ideas (although not a logical presentation of the field) would be of interest not only from the history of science perspective but also from a pedagogical perspective. Therefore, we attempt a concise history of this very interesting field of science.