Born: December 19, 1852, Strelno, Prussian partition of Poland (presently: Strzelno, Poland)
Died: May 9, 1931 in Pasadena, California, USA
Roots and opinions. An excerpt from his biography written by his daughter: “Sunlight filled the village square of Strzelno, Poland, dressed in garlands…They had gathered on that July day in 1963 to hear the speeches of the Mayor, the local Commissar , and the Dean of Science of Copernicus University in Torun at the dedication of a plaque to the memory of a man born in their village on December 19, 1852, who had won the Nobel prize. ‘Strzelno is proud of her son,’ said the Mayor, ‘And although his life was spent far away from us, we will remember that his genius came into being here among our people. It is a great moment in Polish science. He has put us into history.’” Albert Einstein, in 1931, publicly paid tribute to Michelson's extensive contributions to science: “My honored Dr. Michelson, it was you who led the physicists into new paths, and through your marvelous experimental work paved the way for the development of the theory of relativity."
Early days. His father, Samuel Michelson, was a merchant. His mother, Rozalia Przylubska, was a daughter of a Polish merchant from Inowroclaw. He moved to the United States with his parents in 1855. He grew up in the rough mining towns of Murphy's Camp, California and Virginia City, Nevada. President Ulysses S. Grant awarded Michelson a special appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1869. During his four years as a midshipman at the Academy, Michelson excelled in optics, heat and climatology as well as drawing. He graduated in 1873. After two years at sea, he returned to the Academy in 1875 to become an instructor in physics and chemistry until 1879. From 1880 to 1882, Michelson undertook postgraduate studies at Berlin under Helmholtz and at the College de France and École Polytechnique in Paris. In 1881 he resigned from the Navy and returned to America. In 1881 he invented interferometer for the purpose of discovering the effect of the Earth's motion on the observed velocity
Professional career. In 1883 he accepted a position as professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio and concentrated on developing an improved interferometer. In 1887 he and Edward Morley carried out the famous Michelson-Morley experiment which seemed to rule out the existence of the ether. He later moved on to use astronomical interferometers in the measurement of stellar diameters and in measuring the separations of binary stars. In 1890 Michelson became a chairman of Physics Department at Clark University at Worcester, Massachusetts and in 1892 was appointed professor and the first head of the department of physics at the newly organized University of Chicago. He rejoined the Navy during World War I, and in 1918 returned to Chicago where in 1925 he was appointed to the first of the Distinguished Service Professorships. Michelson resigned in 1929 to work at the Mount Wilson Observatory, Pasadena.
Albert Michelson married Margaret Heminway in 1877. They had three children. They divorced in 1895. In 1899, he married Edna Stanton and they raised one son and three daughters.
Speed of light. As early as 1877, while still serving as an officer in the US Navy, Michelson started planning a refinement of the rotating-mirror method of Foucault for measuring the speed of light. He conducted some preliminary measurements using largely improvised equipment in 1878 about which time his work came to the attention of Simon Newcomb, director of the Nautical Almanac Office who was already advanced in planning his own study. Michelson published his result of 299,910±50 km/s in 1879 before joining Newcomb in Washington DC to assist with his measurements there. Feeling the need to study optics before he could be qualified to make real progress, he traveled to Europe in 1880 and spent two years in Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris, resigning from the navy in 1881. Michelson continued to "refine" his method and in 1883 published a measurement of 299,853±60 km/s, rather closer to that of his mentor. The idea that interferometry might be applied to measure the size of stars was first proposed by a French astronomer, Fizeau, in 1868. But the first real achievement of interferometry was a trailblazing series of experiments by Michelson that began in April 1887. Michelson devised a system using mirrors and semitransparent mirrors (now known as beam splitters) for merging separated beams of light coming from the same object. The optical elements in the system were arranged in such a way that the beams "interfered" with each other; that is, the directions and distances of their light paths were so closely meshed that the beams could interact. This historic null result, as scientists call it, was proof that ether, as it was then imagined, does not exist and that Einstein's special theory of relativity, which offers an alternative explanation for the propagation of light, is correct.
Astronomy. His interferometer made it possible for him to determine the width of heavenly objects by matching the light rays from the two sides and noting the interference fringes that resulted. In 1920, using a 6-metre interferometer attached to a 254-centimetre Hooker Telescope at Mt. Wilson near Pasadena, he succeeded in measuring the diameter of the star Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) as 386,160,000 km (300 times the diameter of the Sun). This was the first substantially accurate determination of the size of a star. The measurement of stellar diameters and the separations of binary stars took up an increasing amount of Michelson's life after this.
Prizes and awards. In 1907, Michelson was the first American to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics "for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid". He also won Matteucci Medal (Societá Italiana), 1904; Copley Medal (Royal Society), 1907; Elliot Cresson Medal (Franklin Institute), 1912; Draper Medal (National Academy of Sciences), 1916; Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1923; and the Duddell Medal (Physical Society), 1929. He was President of the American Physical Society (1900), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1910-1911), and the National Academy of Sciences (1923-1927). He was also a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society of London and the Optical Society, an Associate of l'Académie Française. A crater on the Moon is named after him. The University of Chicago Residence Halls remembered Michelson by dedicating Michelson House in his honor. Case Western Reserve has also dedicated a Michelson House to him, and an academic building at the United States Naval Academy also bears his name. Michelson Laboratory at China Lake Naval Weapons Center in Ridgecrest, California is named after him. A plaque to his honor was dedicated in 1963 in his native Strzelno, Poland. Michelson has contributed numerous papers to many scientific periodicals and among his more substantial works are the classics: Velocity of Light (1902), Light Waves and their Uses (1899-1903); and Studies in Optics (1927).
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Albert Abraham Michelson" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
Wikipedia
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Other sources of information from:
Dorothy Michelson Livingston, “The Master of Light,” Charles Scribner ‘s Sons, New York
Nobel Prize
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