The discovery of the Stark effect and its early theoretical explanations

Abstract

Woldemar Voigt After Pieter Zeeman had discovered in the fall of 1896 that an external magnetic field causes spectral lines to split in several components, the logical next step was to investigate whether an electric field would also have an influence on the shape or frequency of spectral lines. The first to publish the results of a systematic theoretical investigation of the possible effect of electric fields was the Göttingen physicist Woldemar Voigt.

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