What Are Michelson's Major Accomplishments

Albert Abraham Michelson

Albert Abraham Michelson was awarded many prestigious awards during his lifetime and after his death. He was the President of the American Physical Society from 1923 to 1927 making renowned changes while president. Some of the many awards he received are the Matteucci Medal, 1904; Copley Medal, 1907; Elliot Cresson Medal, 1912; Draper Medal, 1916; the Nobel Prize, 1907. Some of his accomplishments include determining that the speed of light was a constant in all situations, and finding the diameter of Beetlejuice (Albert A. Michelson - Biographical).

Albert Abraham Michelson was born on December 19, 1852 in Strzelno, Prussia to a poor Jewish family of three. His family promptly immigrated to the United States two years

His parents sent him to a boarding school in San Francisco, California where Michelson excelled in academics and was a standout student in his class. He received attention for his accomplishments and was appointed to the Naval Academy by Ulysses S. Grant when he was only seventeen. After a short tour in the Navy on a ship, he returned to the Naval Academy to become a professor of physics and chemistry in 1873. While teaching at the Academy he met Margaret Hemingway and married her on April, 10, 1877 and they later had two sons and a daughter. Their marriage lasted for twenty years until their eventual divorce. In 1880, he obtained a leave of absence from the Navy to continue his studies of optics abroad at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, and the College de France, and Ecole Polytechniques in Paris for two years. While in Europe, he realized

He was intrigued by the lecture and sparked his mathematical and chemistry genius. During the lecture he came up with an improved experiment to increase the accuracy of determining the speed of light. He worked for many different universities as a physics professor, but throughout his career, he mainly focused on optics, and light. In 1881 he invented an interferometer to experimentally determine how much of an impact the Earth’s motion had on the speed of light. Edward Morley helped him on this experiment and many of his other important experiments and ideas. One of Michelson’s major contributions, the interferometer, helped other scientists to come up with the wave theory of light. His experiments with the interferometer and other contributing ideas/experiments allowed him to find that light traveled at a constant velocity in all inertial systems of reference. From that discovery, scientists were able to more accurately measure a distance by using light waves. That discovery aided him in the development of the rangefinder to aid the Navy in its navigational issues. His interests, then lead him to finding the diameter of the superstar, Beetlejuice (“Albert Abraham Michelson 1852-1931”). After this major scientific discovery, he helped found the American Physical Society with a large group of other renowned physicists, and was later