biography
| name: |
Michelson, A(lbert) A(braham)
|
pronunciation:
[mikelsn]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1852–1931)
|
| biography:
| Physicist, born in Strzelno, C Poland. His family emigrated to the USA in 1854. He trained at the Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, studied physics at various centres in Europe, and became professor of physics at Chicago from 1892. He established the speed of light as a fundamental constant, and in 1907 became the first US scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. He invented an interferometer and an echelon grating, and did important work on the spectrum, but is chiefly remembered for the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) to determine ether drift, the negative result of which set Albert Einstein on the road to the theory of relativity. |
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