American physicist (1852?1931)
Albert Abraham Michelson
FFRS
FRSE
(surname pronunciation anglicized as "Michael-son", December 19, 1852 ? May 9, 1931) was a Prussian-born American
physicist
of Jewish descent, known for his work on measuring the
speed of light
and especially for the
Michelson?Morley experiment
. In 1907 he received the
Nobel Prize in Physics
, becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in a science. He was the founder and the first head of the physics departments of
Case School of Applied Science
(now
Case Western Reserve University
) and the
University of Chicago
.
[3]
[4]
[5]
Life
[
edit
]
Michelson was born in
Strelno
,
Posen
,
Kingdom of Prussia
(modern-day Strzelno, Poland), to Jewish parents,
[6]
the son of Samuel Michelson
[7]
and his wife, Rozalia Przyłubska.
[8]
He moved to the US with his parents in 1855, at the age of two. He grew up in the mining towns of
Murphy's Camp
, California, and
Virginia City, Nevada
, where his father was a merchant. His family was non-religious, and Michelson himself was a lifelong
agnostic
.
[9]
[10]
[11]
He spent his high school years in San Francisco in the home of his aunt, Henriette Levy (nee Michelson), who was the mother of author
Harriet Lane Levy
.
[12]
His sister was the novelist
Miriam Michelson
.
President
Ulysses S. Grant
awarded Michelson a special appointment to the
U.S. Naval Academy
in 1869.
[13]
During his four years as a
midshipman
at the Academy, Michelson excelled in
optics
, heat,
climatology
and
technical drawing
. After graduating in 1873 and two years at sea, he returned to the Naval Academy in 1875 to become an instructor in
physics
and
chemistry
until 1879. In 1879, he was posted to the Nautical Almanac Office, Washington (part of the
United States Naval Observatory
),
[14]
[15]
[16]
to work with
Simon Newcomb
. In the following year he obtained leave of absence to continue his studies in Europe. He visited the Universities of
Berlin
and
Heidelberg
, and the
College de France
and
Ecole Polytechnique
in Paris.
Michelson was fascinated with the sciences, and the problem of measuring the
speed of light
in particular. While at
Annapolis
, he conducted his first
experiments
on the
speed of light
, as part of a class demonstration in 1877. His Annapolis experiment was refined, and in 1879,
[17]
he measured the speed of light in air to be
299
864
±
51
kilometres per second, and estimated the speed of light in vacuum as
299
940
km/s
, or
186
380
mi/s
.
[18]
[19]
[20]
After two years of studies in Europe, he resigned from the
Navy
in 1881. 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 failed to detect evidence of the existence of the
luminiferous ether
. He later moved on to use
astronomical interferometers
in the measurement of stellar diameters and in measuring the separations of binary stars.
In 1889 Michelson became a professor 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
. In 1902, he was elected as a member of the
American Philosophical Society
.
[21]
In 1907, Michelson had the honor of being 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 the
Copley Medal
in 1907, the
Henry Draper Medal
in 1916 and the
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
in 1923. A
crater
on the
Moon
is named after him.
[
citation needed
]
He returned to military service in the closing months of
World War One
as a
Lieutenant Commander
in the
Naval Reserve
, serving in the
Bureau of Ordnance
. He was promoted to
Commander
in the reserve in May 1919 and was recalled briefly to active duty in the
9th Naval District
before being released from service on 30 September 1921.
[2]
Michelson died in
Pasadena, California
, at the age of 78.
[22]
The University of Chicago Residence Halls remembered Michelson and his achievements by dedicating 'Michelson House' in his honor. Case Western Reserve has dedicated a Michelson House to him, and Michelson Hall (an academic building of science classrooms, laboratories and offices) at the
United States Naval Academy
also bears his name. Michelson Laboratory at
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake
in Ridgecrest, California, is named for him. There is a display in the publicly accessible area of the Lab which includes facsimiles of Michelson's Nobel Prize medal, the prize document, and examples of his diffraction gratings. In 2017, a newly renovated physics research center at the University of Chicago was renamed in honor of Michelson as well.
[23]
Numerous awards, lectures, and honors have been created in Albert A. Michelson's name.
[24]
Some of the current awards and lectures named for Michelson include the following: the Bomem-Michelson Award and Lecture annually presented until 2017 by the Coblentz Society;
[25]
the
Michelson?Morley Award
and Lecture, along with the Michelson Lecture Series,
[26]
and the Michelson Postdoctoral Prize Lectureship,
[27]
all of which are given annually by
Case Western Reserve University
; the A.A. Michelson Award presented every year by the
Computer Measurement Group
;
[28]
the Albert A. Michelson Award given by the
Navy League of the United States
;
[29]
and the Michelson Memorial Lecture Series
[30]
presented annually by the Division of Mathematics and Science at the
U.S. Naval Academy
.
Family
[
edit
]
In 1877 Michelson married Margaret Hemingway, daughter of a wealthy New York stockbroker and lawyer and the niece of his commander
William T. Sampson
. They had two sons and a daughter.
[31]
[32]
In 1899, he married Edna Stanton. They raised three daughters.
[32]
He is a great uncle of physicist
Peter Michelson
.
[33]
Speed of light
[
edit
]
Early measurements
[
edit
]
Michelson was fascinated by light all his life. Once asked why he studied light, he reputedly said, "because it's so much fun".
[34]
As early as 1869, while serving as an officer in the
United States Navy
, Michelson started planning a repeat of the rotating-mirror method of
Leon Foucault
for measuring the speed of light, using improved optics and a longer baseline. He conducted some preliminary measurements using largely improvised equipment in 1878, about the same time that 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's formal experiments took place in June and July 1879. He constructed a frame building along the north sea wall of the Naval Academy to house the machinery.
[35]
Michelson published his result of 299,910 ± 50 km/s in 1879 before joining
Newcomb
in Washington DC to assist with his measurements there. Thus began a long professional collaboration and friendship between the two.
Simon Newcomb
, with his more adequately funded project, obtained a value of 299,860 ± 30 km/s, just at the extreme edge of consistency with Michelson's. 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.
Mount Wilson and Lookout Mountain
[
edit
]
In 1906, a novel electrical method was used by
E. B. Rosa
and the
National Bureau of Standards
to obtain a value for the
speed of light
of 299,781 ± 10 km/s. Though this result has subsequently been shown to be severely biased by the poor electrical standards in use at the time, it seems to have set a fashion for rather lower measured values.
From 1920, Michelson started planning a definitive measurement from the
Mount Wilson Observatory
, using a baseline to
Lookout Mountain
, a prominent bump on the south ridge of
Mount San Antonio
("Old Baldy"), some 22 miles distant.
In 1922, the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
began two years of painstaking measurement of the baseline using the recently available
invar
tapes. With the baseline length established in 1924, measurements were carried out over the next two years to obtain the published value of 299,796 ± 4 km/s.
[37]
Famous as the measurement is, it was beset by problems, not least of which was the haze created by the smoke from forest fires which blurred the mirror image. It is also probable that the intensively detailed work of the
geodetic survey
, with an estimated error of less than one part in 1 million, was compromised by a shift in the baseline arising from the
Santa Barbara earthquake
of June 29, 1925, which was an estimated magnitude of 6.3 on the
Richter scale
.
The now-famous
Michelson?Morley experiment
also influenced the affirmation attempts of peer
Albert Einstein
's theory of
general relativity
and
special relativity
, using similar optical instrumentation. These instruments and related collaborations included the participation of fellow physicists
Dayton Miller
,
Hendrik Lorentz
, and
Robert Shankland
.
Michelson, Pease, and Pearson
[
edit
]
The period after 1927 marked the advent of new measurements of the speed of light using novel
electro-optic
devices, all substantially lower than Michelson's 1926 value.
Michelson sought another measurement, but this time in an evacuated tube to avoid difficulties in interpreting the image owing to atmospheric effects. In 1929, he began a collaboration with
Francis G. Pease
and Fred Pearson to perform a measurement in a 1.6 km tube 3 feet in diameter at the Irvine Ranch near Santa Ana, California.
[38]
[39]
In multiple reflections the light path was increased to 5 miles. For the first time in history the speed of light was measured in an almost perfect vacuum of 0.5 mm of mercury. Michelson died with only 36 of the 233 measurement series completed and the experiment was subsequently beset by geological instability and condensation problems before the result of
299
774
±
11 km/s
, consistent with the prevailing
electro-optic
values, was published posthumously in 1935.
[39]
Application of basic statistical principles in Michelson's study of speed of light
[
edit
]
During June and early July 1879, Michelson refined experimental arrangements from those developed by
Hippolyte Fizeau
and
Leon Foucault
. The experimental setup was as follows: Light generated from a source is directed towards a rotating mirror through a slit on a fixed plate; the rotating mirror reflects the incoming light and at a certain angle, towards the direction where another fixed flat mirror is placed whose surface is perpendicular to the incoming ray of light; the rotating mirror should have rotated by an angle
α
by the time the ray of light travels back and is reflected again towards the fixed plate (the distance between the fixed mirror and the rotating one is recorded as
D
); a displacement from the slit is detected on the plate which measures
d
; the distance from the rotating mirror to the fixed plate is designated as the radius
r
while the number of revolutions per second of the mirror is recorded as
ω
. In this way,
tan(2
α
) =
d
/
r
;
Δ
t
= (
α
/2
π
)/
ω
; speed of light can be derived as
c
= 2
D
/Δ
t
.
While at plain sight, four measured quantities are involved: distance
D
, radius
r
, displacement
d
and rotating mirror revolution per second
ω
, which seems simple; yet based on the limitation of the measurement technology at that time, great efforts were made by Michelson to reduce
systematic errors
and apply subsequent corrections. For instance, he adopted a steel measuring tape with a said length of 100 feet and he intended to measure tens of times across the distance; still, he measured its length against a copy of the official standard yard to find out it as 100.006 feet, thus eliminating a systematic error, albeit small.
Aside from the efforts to reduce as much as possible the systematic errors, repeated measurements were performed at multiple levels to obtain more accurate results. As R.J. MacKay and R.W. Oldford remarked in their article,
[40]
'It is clear that Michelson appreciated the power of averaging to reduce variability in measurement', it is clear that Michelson had in mind the property that averages vary less which should be formally described as: the standard deviation of the average of
n
independent random variables is less than that of a single random variable by a factor of the square root of
n
. To realize that, he also strived to have each measurement not influencing each other, thus being mutually
independent random variables
.
A
statistical model
for repeated measurements with the assumption of independence or identical distributions is unrealistic. In the case of light speed study, each measurement is approached as the sum of quantity of interest and measurement error. In the absence of systematic error, the measurement error of speed of light can be modeled by a random sample from a distribution with unknown expectation and finite variance; thus, the speed of light is represented by the expectation of the model distribution and the ultimate goal is to estimate the expectation of the model distribution on the acquired dataset. The law of large numbers suggests to estimate the expectation by the sample mean.
[41]
Michelson?Morley interferometry experiment
[
edit
]
In 1887 he collaborated with colleague
Edward Williams Morley
of Western Reserve University, now part of
Case Western Reserve University
, in the
Michelson?Morley experiment
. Their experiment for the expected motion of the
Earth
relative to the
aether
, the hypothetical medium in which light was supposed to travel, resulted in a
null result
. Surprised, Michelson repeated the experiment with greater and greater precision over the next years, but continued to find no ability to measure the aether. The Michelson?Morley results were immensely influential in the physics community, leading
Hendrik Lorentz
to devise his now-famous
Lorentz contraction
equations as a means of explaining the null result.
There has been some historical controversy over whether
Albert Einstein
was aware of the Michelson?Morley results when he developed his theory of
special relativity
, which pronounced the aether to be "superfluous". In a later interview, Einstein said of the Michelson?Morley experiment, "I was not conscious it had influenced me directly ... I guess I just took it for granted that it was true."
[42]
Regardless of Einstein's specific knowledge, the experiment is today considered the canonical experiment in regards to showing the lack of a detectable aether.
[43]
[44]
The precision of their equipment allowed Michelson and Morley to be the first to get precise values for the
fine structure
in the atomic spectral lines
[45]
for which in 1916
Arnold Sommerfeld
gave a theoretical explanation, introducing the
fine-structure constant
.
Astronomical interferometry
[
edit
]
Optical
[
edit
]
In 1920 Michelson and
Francis G. Pease
made the first measurement of the diameter of a star other than the Sun. Michelson had invented
astronomical interferometry
and built such an instrument at the
Mount Wilson Observatory
which was used to measure the diameter of the
red giant
Betelgeuse
. A periscope arrangement was used to direct light from two subpupils, separated by up to 20 feet (6m), into the main pupil of the 100 inch (2.5m)
Hooker Telescope
, producing interference fringes observed through the eyepiece. The measurement of stellar diameters and the separations of binary stars took up an increasing amount of Michelson's life after this.
Beginning in the 1970s, astronomical interferometry was revived, with the configurations using two (or more) separate apertures (with diameters small compared to their separation) being often referred to as "Michelson Stellar Interferometry". This was to distinguish it from
speckle interferometry
, but should not be confused with the
Michelson interferometer
which is one common
laboratory
interferometer configuration of which the interferometer used in the Michelson?Morley experiment was an instance. Michelson's concept of interfering light from two relatively small apertures separated by a substantial distance (but with that distance, or
baseline
, now often as long as hundreds of meters) is employed at
modern operational observatories
such as
VLTI
,
CHARA
and the U.S. Navy's
NPOI
.
Gravitational wave
[
edit
]
Gravitational waves
are detected using a Michelson interferometer with a laser light source. In 2020 there were three Michelson interferometer gravitational wave detectors operational, and a fourth under construction. These Michelson interferometers have arms 4 kilometers in length, set at 90 degree angles to each other, with the light passing through 1 m diameter vacuum tubes running their entire length. A passing gravitational wave will slightly stretch one arm as it shortens the other. This is precisely the motion to which these Michelson interferometers are most sensitive. As of 2020 fifteen
gravitational wave events
had been observed using these Michelson interferometers.
Harmonic analyzer
[
edit
]
In the 1890s Michelson built a mechanical device called the harmonic analyzer, for computing coefficients of
Fourier series
and drawing graphs of their partial sums. He and
S. W. Stratton
published a paper about this machine in the
American Journal of Science
in 1898.
[46]
[47]
Michelson in popular culture
[
edit
]
In Season 3 Episode 26 of the television series
Bonanza
("Look to the Stars", broadcast March 18, 1962), Ben Cartwright (
Lorne Greene
) helps the 16-year-old Michelson (portrayed by 25-year-old Douglas Lambert (1936?1986)) obtain an appointment to the
U.S. Naval Academy
, despite the opposition of the bigoted town schoolteacher (played by
William Schallert
).
Bonanza
was set in and around
Virginia City, Nevada
, where Michelson lived with his parents prior to leaving for the Naval Academy. In a voice-over at the end of the episode, Greene mentions Michelson's 1907 Nobel Prize.
The home in which Michelson lived as a child in
Murphys Camp, California
was in the store of his father, first on Main Street, Murphys, CA across from the Sperry & Perry Hotel and after the 1859 fire, in a store next to the hotel. His aunt Bertha Meyers owned a house on Main Street toward the east end of town and Michelson probably visited her family there frequently.
New Beast Theater Works in collaboration with High Concept Laboratories produced a 'semi-opera' about Michelson, his obsessive working style and its effect on his family life. The production ran from February 11 to February 26, 2011, in Chicago at The Building Stage. Michelson was portrayed by
Jon Stutzman
. The play was directed by
David Maral
with music composed by
Joshua Dumas
.
[
citation needed
]
Norman Fitzroy Maclean
wrote an essay "Billiards is a Good Game"; published in
The Norman Maclean Reader
(ed. O. Alan Weltzien, 2008), it is an appreciation of Michelson from Maclean's vantage point as a graduate student regularly watching him play billiards.
[48]
Honors and awards
[
edit
]
Michelson was a member of the
Royal Society
, the National Academy of Sciences, the
American Physical Society
and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
.
The
Computer Measurement Group
gives an annual
A. A. Michelson Award
.
See also
[
edit
]
Biography
[
edit
]
- Jaffe, Bernard (1960)
Michelson and the Speed of Light
, Doubleday. New York
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Loyd S. Swenson, Jr.,
The Ethereal Aether
, University of Texas Press, 2013.
- ^
a
b
c
"Michelson"
.
www.history.navy.mil
.
Archived
from the original on July 25, 2021
. Retrieved
August 17,
2022
.
- ^
"Albert A. Michelson, Physics"
.
www.lib.uchicago.edu
. Archived from
the original
on October 21, 2017
. Retrieved
August 2,
2019
.
- ^
"Guide to the Albert A. Michelson Papers 1891?1969"
.
www.lib.uchicago.edu
. Archived from
the original
on September 7, 2019
. Retrieved
August 2,
2019
.
- ^
"Michelson, Albert A. (Albert Abraham), 1852-1931"
.
history.aip.org
. Archived from
the original
on March 22, 2019
. Retrieved
August 2,
2019
.
- ^
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, 1938, Vol. XIX) quotes (on p. 128) Michelson's sister, the novelist Miriam Michelson, as having written of her parents in a letter to Millikan that "both Albert Michelson's father and mother were born of Jewish parents ..."
- ^
"Albert Abraham Michelson 1852?1931"
. American Institute of Physics. Archived from
the original
on February 3, 2016
. Retrieved
January 27,
2016
.
- ^
"APS Physics | FIP | Albert Abraham Michelson: "A Pole - well up in Arithmetic"
"
. Archived from
the original
on September 21, 2019
. Retrieved
September 21,
2019
.
- ^
Bulletin de la Societe des sciences et des lettres de Łod?: Serie, Recherches sur les deformations, Volumes 39?42
. Societe des sciences et des lettres de Łod?. 2003. p. 162.
Michelson's biographers stress, that our hero was not conspicuous by religiousness. His father was a free-thinker and Michelson grew up in non-religious family and have no opportunity to acknowledge the belief of his forebears. He was agnostic through his whole life and only for the short period he was a member of the 21st lodge in Washington.
- ^
John D. Barrow (2002).
The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas About the Origins of the Universe
. Random House Digital, Inc. p.
136
.
ISBN
978-0-375-72609-5
.
Morley was deeply religious. His original training had been in theology and he only turned to chemistry, a self-taught hobby, when he was unable to enter the ministry. Michelson, by contrast, was a religious agnostic.
- ^
Livingston, Dorothy Michelson.
The Master of Light: A Biography of Albert A. Michelson
. University of Chicago Press. p. 106.
On the religious question, Michelson disagreed with both these men. He had renounced any belief that moral issues were at stake in ...
- ^
Levy,
920 O'Farrell Street
, 47.
- ^
Nimitz Library's Virtual Exhibits ? LibExhibits
- ^
Shankland, Paul D.; Orchiston, Wayne (2002).
"Nineteenth century astronomy at the U.S. Naval Academy"
(PDF)
.
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
.
5
(2): 165.
Bibcode
:
2002JAHH....5..165S
.
doi
:
10.3724/SP.J.1440-2807.2002.02.07
.
S2CID
110077408
.
- ^
"USNO ? Our Command History"
.
U.S. Naval Observatory
. Archived from
the original
on June 6, 2011
. Retrieved
June 2,
2011
.
- ^
Shankland, Paul D.; Orchiston, Wayne (2002).
"Nineteenth century astronomy at the U.S. Naval Academy"
(PDF)
.
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
.
5
(2): 165?179.
Bibcode
:
2002JAHH....5..165S
.
doi
:
10.3724/SP.J.1440-2807.2002.02.07
.
S2CID
110077408
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on August 8, 2017
. Retrieved
November 26,
2017
.
- ^
In 1879 a letter from James Clerk Maxwell to the astronomer
David Peck Todd
came to the attention of Michelson, possibly giving him considerable motivation. See the book
Schwinger, J.
(1986).
Einstein's Legacy
. Scientific American Library.
2012 e-book
.
- ^
"raman-scattering.eu"
. Archived from
the original
on March 24, 2012
. Retrieved
June 2,
2011
.
[
failed verification
]
- ^
"Optics at the U.S. Naval Academy"
.
Optics News
.
4
(4). Optical Society of America: 14. 1978.
doi
:
10.1364/ON.4.4.000014
.
- ^
"Michelson's 1879 determinations of the speed of light"
. Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo (Canada).
- ^
"APS Member History"
.
search.amphilsoc.org
. Retrieved
May 19,
2021
.
- ^
In November 1929, at the French Academy of Sciences, Michelson's death was erroneously announced, see
http://cnum.cnam.fr/CGI/fpage.cgi?4KY28.118/97/100/598/5/588
and
http://cnum.cnam.fr/CGI/fpage.cgi?4KY28.118/183/100/598/5/588
- ^
"UChicago names building after pioneering physicist Albert Michelson"
.
UChicago News
. University of Chicago
. Retrieved
January 22,
2021
.
[
permanent dead link
]
- ^
"Michelson Remembered"
. Nimitz Library, US Naval Academy. Archived from
the original
on October 22, 2017
. Retrieved
October 22,
2017
.
- ^
"The ABB Sponsored Bomem-Michelson Award"
.
Coblentz Society
. 2017. Archived from
the original
on October 23, 2017
. Retrieved
October 22,
2017
.
- ^
"Michelson Lectures"
.
Case Western Reserve University
. 2017. Archived from
the original
on May 13, 2017
. Retrieved
October 22,
2017
.
- ^
"Michelson Postdoctoral Prize Lectureship"
. Case Western Reserve University. 2017. Archived from
the original
on May 13, 2017
. Retrieved
October 22,
2017
.
- ^
"Awards & Scholarships: AA Michelson Award Winners"
.
Computer Measurement Group
. 2017. Archived from
the original
on October 22, 2017
. Retrieved
October 22,
2017
.
- ^
"Albert A. Michelson Award"
.
Navy League of the United States
. 2016. Archived from
the original
on October 19, 2018
. Retrieved
December 25,
2018
.
- ^
"Michelson Memorial Lecture Series"
.
U.S. Naval Academy
. 2017. Archived from
the original
on October 22, 2017
. Retrieved
October 22,
2017
.
- ^
James, I. (2009). Driven to Innovate: A Century of Jewish Mathematicians and Physicists p. 101.
ISBN
978-1-906165-22-2
. "In 1877, he married Margaret Hemingway, daughter of a wealthy New York stockbroker and lawyer. This marriage lasted twenty years and produced two sons and a daughter."
- ^
a
b
den Boer, Marten (1999). "Michelson, Albert Abraham".
American National Biography
(online ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
doi
:
10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1301131
.
(subscription required)
- ^
"Links"
.
- ^
"The Master of Light"
.
The Attic
. Archived from
the original
on February 2, 2020
. Retrieved
January 7,
2020
.
- ^
Michelson, Albert A. "
Experimental Determination of the Velocity of Light Made at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis
".
- ^
a
b
"Albert A. Michelson ? Biographical"
.
Archived
from the original on December 22, 2021
. Retrieved
July 9,
2022
.
- ^
Garner, C. L., Captain (retired) (April 1949).
"A Geodetic Measurement of Unusually High Accuracy"
(PDF)
.
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Journal
. Coast and Geodetic Survey: 68?74. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on March 25, 2009
. Retrieved
August 13,
2009
.
{{
cite journal
}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
"Michelson's Last Experiment".
Science
.
73
(1899): 10?14. May 22, 1931.
doi
:
10.1126/science.73.1899.10
.
PMID
17843974
.
- ^
a
b
Michelson, A. A.; Pease, F. G.; Pearson, F. (1935).
"Measurement of the velocity of light in a partial vacuum"
.
Contributions from the Mount Wilson Observatory
.
522
(2091): 100?1.
Bibcode
:
1935Sci....81..100M
.
doi
:
10.1126/science.81.2091.100-a
.
PMID
17816642
.
S2CID
28035563
– via
Astrophysics Data System
.
- ^
Oldford, R. W.; MacKay, R. J. (August 2000).
"Light"
.
Statistical Science
.
15
(3): 254?278.
doi
:
10.1214/ss/1009212817
.
ISSN
0883-4237
.
- ^
Dekking, F. M.; Kraaikamp, C.; Lopuhaa, H. P.; Meester, L. E. (2005).
A Modern Introduction to Probability and Statistics: Understanding Why and How
. Springer. p. 248.
ISBN
978-1852338961
.
- ^
Swenson, Loyd S. Jr.,
The Ethereal Aether: A History of the Michelson?Morley?Miller Aether-Drift Experiments, 1880?1930
, University of Texas Press, 1972
- ^
Note that while Einstein's 1905 paper
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies
appears to reference the experiment on first glance?"together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the 'light medium', suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest"?it has been shown that Einstein was referring to a different category of experiments here.
- ^
Holton, Gerald, "Einstein, Michelson, and the 'Crucial' Experiment",
Isis
, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Summer, 1969), pp. 133?197
- ^
AA. Michelson and E. W. Morley, Amer. J. Sci.34, 427 (1887); Phil Mag. 24, 463 (1887).
- ^
Michelson, Albert A.;
Stratton, Samuel W.
(1898). "A New Harmonic Analyzer".
American Journal of Science
.
- ^
Hammack, Bill
;
Krantz, Steve
; Carpenter, Bruce (2014).
Albert Michelson's Harmonic Analyzer
. Blurb.
ISBN
978-0983966166
.
- ^
Maclean, Norman F. (Summer 1975).
"Billiards is a good game"
. The University of Chicago Magazine. Archived from
the original
on August 17, 2018
. Retrieved
August 16,
2018
.
- ^
"Henry Draper Medal"
. National Academy of Sciences. Archived from
the original
on January 26, 2013
. Retrieved
February 19,
2011
.
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