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December 19: Albert Abraham Michelson

Lawrence Bush
December 20, 2009
albert-michelson-1-sizedAlbert Abraham Michelson, the first American Nobel Prize laureate in the sciences (1907, physics), was born in Prussia on this day in 1852. Michelson computed the speed of light and was the first to measure the diameter of a star, Betelgeuse (300 times the diameter of the sun). A crater on the moon is named after him. “My honored Dr. Michelson, it was you who led the physicists into new paths, and through your marvelous experimental work paved the way for the development of the theory of relativity.” —Albert Einstein

​​​​Lawrence Bush edited Jewish Currents from 2003 until 2018. He is the author of Bessie: A Novel of Love and Revolution and Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, among other books. His new volume of illustrated Torah commentaries, American Torah Toons 2, is scheduled for publication this year.