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Published June 1, 1931 | public
Journal Article Open

Albert A. Michelson, 1852-1931

Abstract

At one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, May 9, 1931, death came very quietly in his home in Pasadena to the most illustrious of the American physicists of our generation, at the age of seventy-eight years and five months. Six weeks earlier he had taken to his bed, after having made with his associates, Messrs. Pease and Pearson, enough observations to assure himself that his last experiment on the speed of light as measured in an evacuated pipe a mile long and three feet in diameter buried in the earth on the Irvine ranch near Santa Ana, California, was going to yield results as satisfactory as he had anticipated. This experiment had been planned for the sake of obtaining a check by a method entirely free from atmospheric effects of all kinds upon the accuracy of his next preceding determination made over a twenty-one mile stretch between California mountain peaks. He did not expect by these new experiments to exceed the accuracy previously obtained, but rather to add something to the reliability of the previous determination.

Additional Information

©1931 The American Physical Society. Received 11 May 1931.

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August 21, 2023
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October 16, 2023