And Michelson Biography

He did what allowed Einstein to create the theory of relativity. All his life he was engaged in measuring what, as it turned out, invariably and indestructible - the speed of light. So, meet the first American nobeliat, Albert Abraham Michelson. The wording of the Nobel Committee: “For the creation of accurate optical instruments and spectroscopic and metrological studies performed with their” For HIS Optical Precision Instroscope and the Spectroscopic and Metrological Investigation Outs AID.

Despite the fact that Michelson is an American, our hero was born on the territory of modern Poland. The current town is then steady very tiny, in it lives near a person. In the year, he belonged to Prussia. Albert's dad, of course, was not Michelson, this is the English pronunciation of the surname Michelson, and he was not Samuel, but Samuel. The mother of the future Nobeliat was completely a Pole, Rosalie Pzhlyubsk.

The father managed to use the “disease”, who was then reigning in the States, gold fever, and began to sell dry rations to gold miners in Nevada. The son was sent to relatives, to the Pacific coast in San Francisco, where Michelson went to school. Here he was lucky with the director: he managed to arouse a passion for natural sciences in a young man. Yes, so that, upon reaching the appropriate age, the young man began to torment him with questions, where to go to study further.

The director advised the Naval Academy in Annapolis. And then the young man showed miracles of perseverance. The fact that there was no vacancy in the academy in the year, the young man did not stop at all. He took a recommendation from his congressman and went with her to anyone, but to the very supreme commander, that is, to Ulysses Simpson Grant. The brilliant commander and the eighteenth president of the United States, whom we have known for more than a hundred years by fifty -dollar bill.

Apparently, Grant was somewhat surprised at the pressure of the young man and allocated an additional place. For four years, the Academy was over, two years had to be served by midshipman, and since the year Michelson was a teacher of physics and chemistry at the academy. It was here that he did his first outstanding scientific work. Of course, it has already been measured before him.

For example, in the year the Frenchman Jean Bernard Leon Foucault measured her, simultaneously buried the Newtonian theory of the expiration of the world, and clarified the result of the year. Foucault turned out a kilometer per second. The Foucault method consisted in the sequential reflection of the beam of light from a rapidly rotating mirror, then from the second motionless mirror located at an accurately measured distance, and then again from the first mirror that managed to turn to a certain small corner.

The speed of light is determined at the known speed of rotation of the first mirror and the distance between the two mirrors by changing the direction of the three times reflected light beam. So he first declared himself in the physical world. In the year, the young scientist left Annapolis and went to Europe for two years: it was there that the best optics worked and taught there and it was there that Michelson constructed his interferometer, which allowed to study optical phenomena based on the interferometry of light waves.

In the year, Michelson conducted his experiment on measuring the dependence of the speed of light on whether the observer is moving on Earth to the Sun or from the Sun. The results of the measured light speed turned out to be exactly the same. The future Nobel laureate Hendrick Lorenz, who, until the end of his life, stood in the positions of "classical physics", said that "theoretical value of experience is overstated." It is curious that Einstein did not read Michelson before his work on the theory of relativity of work.

Another thing is also important: the fact that the building of classical physics was staggered did not feel everyone. However, one theory cracked very tightly. The fact is that when James Clerk Maxwell created his own electromagnetic theory, it was assumed that light is an electromagnetic wave in a special environment, on the air this concept was proposed by Descartes.

But if ether is a special luminiferous environment, then the speed of light should definitely differ depending on whether light moves to the ground, from it or at an angle to it. And this was not. But in his technique, the author of the article in the American Journal of Science was sure. Therefore, the summer experimenter wrote in the article: "Thus, it is shown that the theory of the stationary broadcast is incorrect." It was there that his cooperation began with Edward Williams Morley, a professor of chemistry.

In chemistry, Morley became famous for the precise establishment of masses of various elements, but he entered the history primarily as the co -author of Michelson in an improved experiment. In the year, they repeated the experiment on a much more perfect technique - the result was the same: the ether does not exist. Although Lorenz tried to fight and put forward new theories of ether that would explain the experiments, the time of the etheric theory has expired.

As one person said, who had nothing to do with physics, such a clumsy turns out.After that, Michelson began to study the spectral lines in the spectra of excited atoms and opened a thin structure in them - the fact that each line of the spectrum actually consists of the finest “genes”. In parallel, he was able to introduce a standard of a meter, expressing it in 1 ,,,, 03 wavelengths of one of the lines of the cadmium spectrum.

All work of Michelson is primarily the highest quality of the experiment. It was this that touched the members of the Nobel Committee, and allowed him to go around the seven Gabriel Lippman a prize of the year, five Johannes Van-Waals Prize of the Year and seven Ernest Rutherford over his science and collecting brands, the Nobel Committee, and the Nobel Committee. in chemistry. Representing the laureate, a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, K.

Hasselberg said: "The interferometer Michelson made possible measurements with unusually high accuracy." In the year, he was first able to measure the diameter of the distant star Betelheze. It turned out about millions of kilometers about diameters of the Sun. Comparative sizes of space bodies. Together with Francis Piz and Fred Pierzon, he began to measure speed in vacuum pipes - then Michelson was already 78 years old!

He was not stopped by several strokes, and he led his work from his own bed. He managed to conduct 36 from the planned measurements, interrupted his next stroke. Inexhaustible energy, “golden hands”, a clear mind and a huge number of practical results for modern physics. This is our today's hero.