Albert Abraham Michelson

Born on December 19, 1852 in Streynor (now Poland), he moved to the United States with his parents. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1873, served as a professor at the University of Chicago, chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and president of the American Academy of Sciences; he was also elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a member of the Royal Society of London. He died in Pasadena on May 9, 1931.

Michelson is mainly engaged in research in optics and spectroscopy. He devoted his life to the precise measurement of the speed of light and has been the international center of the determination of the speed of light throughout his lifetime. He invented an interferometer (Michelson interferometer) to measure minute lengths, refractive index and wavelength of light, and plays an important role in studying spectral lines.

The Michelson interferometer he created was a huge contribution to optics and modern physics. It can not only be used to measure minute lengths, refractive index and light wavelength, but is also an important part of modern optical instruments such as Fourier Spectrometer. In 1926, the speed of light was measured relatively accurately by using the multi-faceted rotating mirror method. Michelson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907 for the creation of sophisticated optical instruments and the research on spectroscopy and basic metrology carried out using these instruments.