Michelson and his interferometer
DOI: 10.1063/1.3128534
Albert Abraham Michelson was the first American scientist to win the Nobel Prize, and his career is one of the most fascinating in the entire history of physics. His earliest work was firmly based on the classical physics of geometrical optics—in a precise determination of the velocity of light by an improved Foucault method. But then he mastered wave optics and invented his interferometer, and from that point on he proceeded to dazzle the scientific world with a display of the applications he found for his invention during a career that exhibited throughout a unique pattern of originality and dedication to physics.
References
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More about the Authors
Robert S. Shankland. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
