Hendrik Antoon Lorentz: biography and contributions of this Dutch physicist

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz is one of the most important scientists in recent Dutch history, with findings that have contributed to making physics as we know it today and influencing illustrious figures such as Albert Einstein or Ernest Rutherford.

Very given to both science and languages, Lorentz contributed to the scientific panorama of his time by publishing various works on his scientific findings not only in his native Dutch, but also in French, German and English.

Described as versatile, friendly and charismatic by his contemporaries, Lorentz has gone down in history as the one who gave strength to the idea that electromagnetism and light were related to negatively charged subatomic particles, the electrons. Today we are going to discover what happened to his life through this biography of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in summary format.

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Brief Biography of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1902. Lorentz's discoveries were an immense step in the development of electromagnetic theory, and one that he gave theoretical and practical to several of the important discoveries of the last century, among them Albert's Theory of Relativity Einstein.

His childhood

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was born on July 18, 1853 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. His parents were Gerrit Frederik Lorentz, a wealthy horticulturist, and Geertruida van Ginkel, who passed away when Lorentz was just four years old. When his wife passed away, Gerrit Lorentz remarried Luberta Hupkes.

As a child, Hendrik Antoon attended two of the three daily shifts at the local school. When the first institute was opened in his hometown in 1866, young Lorentz was ready to start the third grade. He was an outstanding student, with spectacular results not only for sciences such as mathematics and physics, but also for French, German and English.

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University education and academic life

At the end of the fifth and final year of the institute, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz studied classical languages, something required in his time to be able to study at university. He enrolled in 1870 at the University of Leiden and, just a year later, obtained a degree in mathematics and physics.. In 1872 he returned to his native Arnhem to teach mathematics in the afternoon at the local institute.

At this time he was preparing his doctoral thesis on the reflection and refraction of light, entitled in Dutch “Over de theorie der terugkaatsing en breking van het licht”. In this thesis he explained with great clarity a concept that had not yet been translated into Dutch, and he also dared to perfect in this way the electromagnetic theory raised by James C. Maxwell. He defended his thesis in 1875, obtaining with it his doctorate when he was only 22 years old.

In 1878 he was appointed professor at the University of Leiden, taking charge of the new department of theoretical physics of the institution.. In his inaugural reading he discussed molecular theories in physics, an important text for the history of Dutch physics and entitled "De moleculaire theoriën in de natuurkunde" (Molecular theories in physical).

In 1880, Henrik Lorentz established the relationship between the polarization of a molecule and the refractive index of a substance composed of molecules with this polarization. This finding was made in the same way as the Danish physicist Ludwig Valentin Lorenz, working independently. For this reason this relationship is known as the Lorenz-Lorentz formula.

In 1881 Lorentz was admitted as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In that same year he married Aletta Catharina Kaiser, daughter of J. W. Kaiser, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, who would become the director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Kaiser was an illustrious person, who would go on to be the designer of the first Dutch postage stamps.

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Electromagnetic theory

During the first twenty years living in Leiden, Henrik Antoon Lorentz dedicated them to studying the electromagnetic theory of electricity, magnetism and light. After a while he ended up expanding his research to various topics, including hydrodynamics and general relativity. His major contributions were to electromagnetism, electron theory, and relativity..

Around this time, Lorentz's intention was to come up with a unique theory that would explain the relationship between electricity, magnetism, and light. For this reason, in 1892 he published "La théorie électromagnétique de Maxwell et son application aux corps mouvants" which, as its title indicates, was based on the studies of Maxwell and affirmed that the phenomena of electricity are due to movements of elementary electrical particles, electrons, a term that was originally created by George Johnstone Stoney.

At that time it was known that electromagnetic radiation was produced by the oscillation of electrical charges, but the charges that generated light were still unknown. It was assumed that an electric current was made up of charged particles, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz He deduced that the atoms of matter must be charged particles and predicted, in 1892, that the oscillations of these particles must be the source of light.

Lorentz stated that, if instead of using Galileo's transformations others were used, Maxwell's equations about the propagation of light were invariable, so the ether should not be used as a system of reference. His proposal, which would end up being called the Lorentz transformations, related the coordinates of space and time, allowing the description of electromagnetic phenomena when they go from a fixed system to another with a constant speed.

With this, he not only explained the perceived absence of relative motion of the Earth with respect to the ether, as the experiments indicated of Albert Abraham Michelson and Edward Morley, but also served for Albert Einstein later to propose the theory of relativity.

Lorentz transformations are so important to physics because made variables the equations of mechanics, which until that time seemed even absurd. These formulas describe the increase in mass, shortening in length, and time dilation that are characteristic of a moving object. These ideas laid the foundations for Einstein's special theory, and in fact, there are those who believe that the forerunner of it was Hendrik Antoon Lorentz.

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Discovery of the Zeeman effect and Nobel Prize

During the 1880s, Lorentz commissioned his student and personal assistant Pieter Zeeman to investigate whether a strong magnetic field could affect the oscillations and wavelengths of light. What Zeeman observed in 1986 was that sodium D lines in a flame decompose under a strong magnetic field, prompting him to formulate what is known today as the Zeeman effect. This postulates that if a light source is subjected to a magnetic field, the spectral lines of different wavelengths break down into more components, with frequencies slightly different.

With this discovery, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1902. They were recognized for their great work on the influence of magnetism on radiation phenomena, a contribution that would be crucial for the physics of the early twentieth century, so much so that it would serve Einstein to continue developing his Theory of Relativity and formulate it as we know it today in day.

In 1907, while in Leipzig, Germany, he published various memoirs collected under the title "Abhandlungen über theoretische Physik" (Treatises on theoretical physics). In 1909 he published his book "Theory of electrons". Between 1919 and 1920 he published five volumes where he collected his lectures on theoretical physics at the University of Leiden.

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Last years and death

In 1908, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was awarded the Rumford Medal and the Copley Medal.awarded by the Royal Society of London in honor of his scientific work and outstanding achievements in physics. In 1912, Lorentz was appointed director of research at the Teyler Institute in Haarlem and secretary of the Dutch Society for Sciences. Despite his new charges, he continued to work as an honorary professor at the University of Leiden, teaching a class every Monday morning.

In 1919 Lorentz was appointed president of the committee for the study of the movements of sea water to organize during and after the recovery of the Zuiderzee Dam, one of the greatest engineering works of all time hydraulics. His theoretical calculations, which were the result of an arduous eight-year investigation, were confirmed in practice and since then they have been a classic in the science of hydraulics.

Despite receiving numerous proposals for chairs to practice abroad, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz He preferred to stay in his native Holland, working at the University of Leiden until his retirement in 1923. He would continue as emeritus professor of the institution until his death.

In 1923 Lorentz was elected as a member of the International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, a body of the League of Nations (the pre-World War II UN). This committee was made up exclusively of the most illustrious and gifted academics. Lorentz became its president in 1925. In addition, he was president of all Solvay Congresses, conferences where the most eminent scientists of the time met.

In January 1928, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz became seriously ill, dying on February 4 of that same year in Haarlem., at the age of 74. The funeral was held on February 10, presided over by Sir Ernest Rutherford on behalf of the Royal Society. At the last ringing of the bell to indicate that it was 12 noon, all the telegraph services and Dutch telephone companies stood for three minutes as a tribute to the largest Dutch citizen in the world. epoch.