Light & Death

A rapier of Light served Albert Abraham Michelson, master precisionist, to parry Death. Two years ago in Chicago he had a paralytic stroke. He was then 76. Life itself, although it was "so much fun," was no longer precious. It would have been easy to drop his guard. But mankind had taken his word for the all important speed of Light, measuring stick of the universe, and he was not positive that his word was good. He must remeasure the speed.

He and Mrs. Michelson moved from their Chicago cottage to a Pasadena bungalow, where they were last week. A few miles to the south, near Santa Ana, was a mile long metal tube with a perfectly straight bore. Dr. Michelson had fixed mirrors at each end. Between the mirrors he could jiggle a beam of light. Because air modifies the speed of light and Precisionist Michelson disliked taking airy variables into his calculations, he arranged devices to create a vacuum in his tube.

Near Pasadena is Mount Wilson, "Eye of the World," where Director Walter Sydney Adams, Dr. Edwin Powell Hubble and a corps of associates measure the distances, speeds, conditions and compositions of the universe by means of Dr. Michelson's light stick. Any error on his part multiplies their errors.

This spring Dr. Michelson started the machinery of his tube. It was high time. Death was crowding him closely, might at any stroke get under his guard. Dr. Michelson tightened all his energies. When Albert Einstein, whose theories grew out of the Michelson light measurements, was at Pasadena, he noted how frail and nerve wrought Dr. Michelson was. But no one could keep him from his work, not his wife, nor his four children, nor associates. He worked feverishly. His nerves broke down. He dared not travel between cottage and tube. Yet Fred Pearson, his long time assistant, and Dr. Francis Gladheim Pease of the Mount Wilson Observatory, who were running his lights and mirrors for him, brought him their observations. Together they calculated and recalculated.

Last week he was paralyzed. Numbness crept up his legs, to his midriff. Nonetheless he was desperately at work to recheck and recheck figures which indicated that Light's exact speed was very close to 186,285 miles per second. He dictated a brief introduction to the scientific report of the experiment. Not before that was finished did Albert Abraham Michelson's guard go down and Death's numbness creep into his heart.

California gold attracted and European revolutions drove the Michelson family from their home at Strelno, Germany. Albert Abraham, then two, was just beginning to distinguish between German, Yiddish and Polish phrases. Nevada silver made the family pause at Virginia City, made with the Comstock Lode. There in 1869 Charles Michelson, now publicity director of the Democratic National Committee, was born. Tumultous Virginia City was no place to raise a family, although the small clothing store the father operated was prosperous. The Michelsons moved to Calaveras, Calif., birthplace in 1870 of Miriam Michelson, dramatic critic and author (Petticoat King, Duchess of Suds). Three years later the "big bonanza" broke at Virginia City. Miners took $21,000,000 of silver ore from the Comstock Lode in one year. The Mackays, Fairs, O'Briens and Floods became multimillionaires.

Any fortune qualms in the Michelson family did not annoy Albert Abraham. He was at the time graduating from the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father had insisted he go there. But he failed of appointment. Tenacious, he appealed to President Grant for special appointment, and won. At Annapolis the superintendent once scolded him soundly: ''If you'd give less attention to those scientific things and more to your naval gunnery, there might come a time when you would know enough to be of some use to your country."

In 1873, the year of Midshipman Michelson's graduation, James Clerk Maxwell published his thesis on Electricity and Magnetism, which propounded that light was an electromagnetic phenomena. That fascinated young Michelson as it did every contemporary scientist and led him, when later he became an Annapolis instructor of physics, to measure light's speed. Ever after, all that he did was related to the problem of light's behavior.*

*Dr. Michelson's only son Truman, ethnologist with the Smithsonian Institution, was born the same year (1879) as Albert Einstein. Dr. Einstein was at Oxford last week describing the Michelson work to local scholars.

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