DeWitt Bristol Brace

DeWitt Bristol Brace (born January 5, 1859 in Wilson , New York , † October 2, 1905 ) was an American physicist, who was particularly known for his optical experiments, which, among other things, the effects of a possible movement of the earth against the so-called Ether should check.

life and work

DeWitt Bristol Brace was studying at Lockport and graduated from Boston University in 1881 . He then spent two years at the Johns Hopkins University with Henry Augustus Rowland and two years at the University of Berlin with Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff , where he received his doctorate in 1885. From 1887 to 1888 he was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and from 1888 to 1905 professor of physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln . In Nebraska, Brace planned and founded the physics laboratory. He fell ill in 1905 and died when the new laboratory opened, which still bears his name today.

Brace was mainly engaged in research on optics, and he invented new varieties of polarizing filters . He carried out a series of experiments, which should determine the state of motion of the earth in the ether (ether wind), whereby the results were all negative. Particularly important was the improved execution of an experiment by Lord Rayleigh , where he proved with great accuracy that the Lorentz contraction does not lead to birefringence ( experiments by Rayleigh and Brace ). He also tried to measure the speed of light with great accuracy, but he died in the middle of his work.

Brace was a Fellow and Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , and a member of the Council of the American Physical Society .

On July 28, 1999, the asteroid (10392) Brace was named after him.

Fonts

Wikisource: DeWitt Bristol Brace  - Sources and full texts (English)

• On Double Refraction in Matter moving through the Aether (Philosophical Magazine, p. 6., Vol. 7, No. 40., April 1904, pp. 317–329)
• The Ether and moving Matter (Congress of arts and science, universal exposition, St. Louis 1904, (1906), vol. 4, pp. 105–117)
• The Negative Results of Second and Third Order Tests of the "Aether Drift," and Possible First Order Methods (Philosophical Magazine (1905), vol. 10, pp. 71-80)
• The Aether "Drift" and Rotary Polarization. (Phil. Mag., London, (Ser. 6), 10, 1905, pp. 383–396)
• A Repetition of Fizeau's Experiment on the Change produced by the Earth's Motion on the Rotation of a Refracted Ray (Phil. Mag., London, (Ser. 6), 10, 1905, pp. 591-599)

literature

• Magic, WF: DeWitt Bristol Brace . In: Astrophysical Journal . August 22, pp. 343-345. bibcode : 1905ApJ .... 22..343M . (Princeton University obituary)
• David Cahan & M. Eugene Rudd: Science at the American Frontier: A Biography of DeWitt Bristol Brace . University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska 2000, ISBN 0803215088 .

Web links

• Brace at the University of Nebraska