PHYSICIST AND FIRST AMERICAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNER

Background.

Albert Abraham Michelson was born in Prussia, in 1852, immigrating with his family at the age of four first to Panama and then to San Francisco, where his father became an itinerant merchant serving the mining camps of the Gold Rush days. He was sent to boarding school where he developed an interest in science and, after an interview in 1869 with President Ulysses Grant, was appointed to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Upon graduation he was named physics instructor at the academy. He became interested in the speed of light and how to measure it accurately. As a result he was granted a leave of absence, which permitted him to spend 1880 to 1882 in Europe, much of the time in the physics laboratory of Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin.

The Velocity of Light.

The problem of measuring the speed of light had both practical and theoretical aspects. Under...