Michelson, Albert Abraham 1852-1931
US physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Strzelno, Poland, he emigrated with his family to the USA and graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1873. After teaching at the Academy, the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland and Clarke University, he became Professor of Physics at Chicago University in 1892. His lifelong passion was precision measurement in experimental physics, and he is chiefly remembered for the Michelson-Morley experiment to determine ether drift, the negative result of which set Albert Einstein on the road to the theory of relativity. The interferometer which he invented for this experiment was developed subsequently for spectroscopic studies, and he also developed a stellar interferometer for measuring the sizes and separations of celestial bodies. In 1898 he invented the echelon grating, an ultra-high-resolution device for the study and measurement of hyperfine spectra. Michelson became the first US scientist to win a Nobel Prize when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1907. A member (1888) and president (1923-27) of the US National Academy of Sciences, his many honours included foreign membership of the Royal Society (1902), and the award of the Society's Copley Medal (1907).

Bibliography: Dorothy Michelson Livingston, The Master of Light (1973)