First U.S. Nobel physicistIn 1907, the first U.S. scientist to receive the Nobel Prize was Albert Michelson, a German-born American physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations.” He designed the highly accurate Michelson interferometer and used it to accurately measure the speed of light and establish it as a fundamental constant. In 1887, with Edward Morley, he also used it in an attempt to measure the velocity of the earth through the ether (yielding null results that later led Albert Einstein to his theory of relativity). He measured the standard meter bar in Paris to be 1,553,163.5 wavelengths of the red cadmium line (1892-3).« |
