Albert Abraham Michelson Inventor of Speed of Light Theory

Biography of Albert Abraham Michelson

Early Life

Albert Abraham Michelson proposer of speed of light theory was born in 1852 in Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia and he was born in a Jewish family. His family migrates to America in 1854. He passed his childhood in rough towns of California and Nevada because his father was a trader by profession. He got his early education in San Francisco and later on he went to Annapolis for further studies.

Achievements

He passed four years in naval academy and main fields of his view were optics, light, drawing and climatology. He got his graduation degree in 1873 and after two years of his graduation he started teaching chemistry and physics. He resigned from this post in 1880 and spent most of his time in studies. He was much interested to field of light and he wanted to measure the speed of light. He was sure that light has a specific travelling speed and he worked for it to find out that what the minimum speed, with which light travels, is.

Inventor of Speed of Light Theory

He was appointed as a professor of physics in Clark University in 1889 and then after teaching for couples of years over there, he was offered the seat of head of the department of physics at Chicago University and that was the position which he adapted till 1931.  When he was in Annapolis, he conducted his first experiment to measure speed of light by his self made instrument consisting of two mirrors. One of them was stationary while other was moving with speed of almost 130 turns per second. He passed the light from it and got almost exact speed of light which was 186, 508 miles per second. He conducted another most important and most successful experiment, in which he stated that the particles of light and their movement is uncertain in a way that it can be different in varying conditions.

Nobel Prize

Albert Abraham Michelson was the first ever scientist of America to be awarded the Nobel Prize in the field of physics. He got very fame when he established the experiment of speed of light and by that found out the exact speed of light. For this remarkable work he was awarded the Noble Prize of physics. He had a career which was full of work. He made tremendous addition in the fields of optics and light.

Death

In 1931, when he was working on another very important experiment about velocity of light, he died on May 9 in Pasadena, California. When he died, he was 79 years of age. It is said about him that he was an institution himself in the field of physics.