Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch theoretical physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the force acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. He was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency of the material, resulting in abnormal refractive indices. Lorentz received many other honors and distinctions, including a term as Chairman of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, the forerunner of UNESCO, from 1925 until his death in 1928.
Early life and education Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was born on 18 July 1853 in Arnhem, Netherlands, the son of Gerrit Frederik Lorentz (1822–1893) and Geertruida van Ginkel (1826–1861). In 1862, after his mother's death, his father married Luberta Hupkes. Despite being raised as a Protestant, he was a freethinker in religious matters and regularly attended Catholic mass at his local French church. From 1866 to 1869, Lorentz attended the Hogere Burgerschool in Arnhem, a new type of public high school recently established by Johan Thorbecke. His results in school were exemplary; not only did he excel in the physical sciences and mathematics, but also in English, French, and German. In 1870, he passed the exams in classical languages, which were then required for admission to university. In 1870, Lorentz entered Leiden University, where he was strongly influenced by the teaching of astronomy professor Frederik Kaiser; it was his influence that led Lorentz to become a physicist. The following year, he obtained a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics. In 1872, he returned to Arnhem to become a night school teacher, while also continuing his studies at Leiden. In 1875, he received his Ph.D. under Pieter Rijke with a thesis on the reflection and refraction of light, in which he refined the electromagnetic theory of James Clerk Maxwell.
Career In 1878, Lorentz was appointed to the newly established Chair of Theoretical Physics at Leiden University; the position had initially been offered to Johannes van der Waals, but he had just accepted a professorship at the University of Amsterdam. On 25 January 1878, he delivered his inaugural lecture titled De moleculaire theoriën in de natuurkunde (The molecular theories in physics). During his first 20 years at Leiden, Lorentz was primarily interested in the electromagnetic theory of electricity, magnetism, and light. After that, he extended his research to a much wider area while still focusing on theoretical physics. He made significant contributions to fields ranging from hydrodynamics to general relativity. His most important contributions were in the area of electromagnetism, the electron theory, and relativity. In 1910, Lorentz decided to reorganize his career; his teaching and management duties at Leiden University were taking up too much of his time, leaving him little time for research. He initially asked Albert Einstein to succeed him as Professor of Theoretical Physics at Leiden. However, Einstein did not accept, because he had just taken up a position at ETH Zurich and the prospect of having to fill Lorentz's shoes made him shiver. He ultimately chose Paul Ehrenfest as his successor. In 1912, Lorentz resigned from his chair at Leiden University to become Curator of the Physical Cabinet at Teylers Museum in Haarlem. He continued to teach at Leiden as Extraordinary Professor, delivering his famous "Monday morning lectures" on new developments in theoretical physics.
Research
Electrodynamics and relativity In 1892 and 1895, Lorentz worked on describing electromagnetic phenomena (the propagation of light) in reference frames that move relative to the postulated luminiferous aether. He discovered that the transition from one to another reference frame could be simplified by using a new time variable that he called local time and which depended on universal time and the location under consideration. Although he did not give a detailed interpretation of the physical significance of local time, with it, he could explain the aberration of light and the result of the Fizeau experiment. In 1900 and 1904, Henri Poincaré called local time Lorentz's "most ingenious idea" and illustrated it by showing that clocks in moving frames are synchronized by exchanging light signals that are assumed to travel at the same speed against and with the motion of the frame (see Einstein synchronisation and Relativity of simultaneity). In 1892, with the attempt to explain the Michelson–Morley experiment, he also proposed that moving bodies contract in the direction of motion. In 1899 and again in 1904, Lorentz added time dilation to his transformations and published what Poincaré in 1905 named Lorentz transformations. It was apparently unknown to Lorentz that Joseph Larmor had used identical transformations to describe orbiting electrons in 1897. Larmor's and Lorentz's equations look somewhat dissimilar, but they are algebraically equivalent to those presented by Poincaré and Einstein in 1905. Lorentz's 1904 paper includes the covariant formulation of electrodynamics, in which electrodynamic phenomena in different reference frames are described by identical equations with well defined transformation properties. The paper clearly recognizes the significance of this formulation, namely that the outcomes of electrodynamic experiments do not depend on the relative motion of the reference frame. The 1904 paper includes a detailed discussion of the increase of the inertial mass of rapidly moving objects in a useless attempt to make momentum look exactly like Newtonian momentum; it was also an attempt to explain the length contraction as the accumulation of "stuff" onto mass making it slow and contract.
Zeeman effect Lorentz theorized that atoms consist of charged particles, and suggested that the oscillations of these charged particles were the source of light. His colleague and former student, Pieter Zeeman, discovered the Zeeman effect in 1896, and Lorentz supplied its theoretical interpretation. Their joint work earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1902.
Special relativity
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