A short life of the author
Albert Abraham Michelson (1852–1931) was born in Strelno, Prussia (now Poland), and emigrated to the United States as a child. He studied at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he began his lifelong obsession with measuring the speed of light with ever-greater precision.
The Michelson-Morley experiment (1887), conducted with Edward Morley at Case Western Reserve University, attempted to detect the motion of the Earth through the supposed “luminiferous aether” by measuring differences in the speed of light in perpendicular directions. The experiment’s null result — no aether drift was detected — was one of the great puzzles of late nineteenth-century physics and became a key piece of evidence supporting Einstein’s 1905 special theory of relativity, which dispensed with the aether entirely.
Michelson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907 — the first American to receive a Nobel in any scientific field.
Published Works
Light Waves and Their Uses (1903, University of Chicago Press) — Michelson’s Lowell Lectures, a clear and accessible account of his work on light, interferometry, and the measurement of the speed of light.
Collecting Michelson
Light Waves and Their Uses (1903, University of Chicago Press) first editions are scarce and bring $200–$600 in good condition. They are collected by historians of physics and science. Signed material is rare. Michelson’s scientific instruments are in museum collections.