[1] He was born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), the son of the co-owner of the well-known Castell grain company, Otto Wien.
[1][3] In 1892 he worked with Wilhelm Röntgen in Würzburg, where in 1893 he received the habilitation, qualifying him to be a professor.
In 1904 he became full Professor at the Technical High School of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland).
[1] Wien's scientific research were in the areas of high frequency electronics, acoustics, and electrolyte conductance.
William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, was the first to use a Wien bridge as a feedback network around a vacuum tube amplifier to create an oscillator in 1939.