Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and the problem of the Zuiderzee tides

10.3990/2.207 ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.J. Kox
Keyword(s):  
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz

Showcasing Science

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Scientific Instrument ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Electrostatic Generator ◽  
History Of ◽  
World Class ◽  
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz ◽  
Set Up

Teylers Museum was founded in 1784 and soon thereafter became one of the most important centres of Dutch science. The Museum’s first director, Martinus van Marum, famously had the world’s largest electrostatic generator built and set up in Haarlem. This subsequently became the most prominent item in the Museum’s world-class, publicly accessible, and constantly growing collections. These comprised scientific instruments, mineralogical and palaeontological specimens, prints, drawings, paintings, and coins. Van Marum’s successors continued to uphold the institution’s prestige and use the collections for research purposes, while it was increasingly perceived as an art museum by the public. In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Prize laureate Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was appointed head of the scientific instrument collection and conducted experiments on the Museum’s premises. Showcasing Science: A History of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century charts the history of Teylers Museum from its inception until Lorentz’ tenure. From the vantage point of the Museum’s scientific instrument collection, this book gives an analysis of the changing public role of Teylers Museum over the course of the nineteenth century.

A Living Work of Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Kox ◽  
H. F. Schatz
Keyword(s):  
Albert Einstein ◽  
Relativity Theory ◽  
Front Page ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Scientific Cooperation ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
General Audience ◽  
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz ◽  
Scientific Achievements

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was one of the greatest physicists and mathematicians the Netherlands has ever known. Einstein called him “a living work of art, a perfect personality.” During his funeral in 1928, the entire Dutch nation mourned. The national telegraph service was suspended for three minutes and his passing was national and international front-page news. The cream of international science, an impressive list of dignitaries including the Prince Consort, and thousands of ordinary people turned out to see Lorentz being carried to his last resting place. This biography describes the life of Lorentz, from his early childhood as the son of a market gardener in the provincial town of Arnhem, to his death as a leading light in physics and international scientific cooperation and a trailblazer for Einstein’s relativity theory. A number of chapters shed light on his unique place in science, the importance of his ideas, his international conciliatory and scientific activities after World War One, his close friendship with Albert Einstein, and his important role as Einstein’s teacher and intellectual critic. By making use of recently discovered family correspondence, the author was able to show that there lies a true human being behind Lorentz’s façade of perfection. One chapter is devoted to Lorentz’s wife Aletta, a woman in her own right whose progressive feminist ideas were of considerable influence on those of her husband. Two separate chapters focus on his most important scientific achievements, in terms accessible to a general audience.

The case of the stolen rooms

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
DIRK VAN DELFT
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Personal Use ◽  
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz ◽  
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes ◽  
Short Time

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853–1926) was famous for the Cryogenic Laboratory he built up at Leiden University. Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928), Professor of theoretical physics at the same university and Onnes' closest colleague, left Leiden in 1912. According to Lorentz's daughter, this move had been initiated by a ‘trick’ Onnes had played on her father a few years earlier. Lorentz had been given two small laboratories for his personal use, but within a short time, according to Lorentz' daughter, Onnes just pinched those rooms and added them to his big laboratory. How did Kamerlingh Onnes and Lorentz get along together, and what really happened in the ‘case of the stolen rooms’?

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