Abstract
This article discusses new material, published in volume 12 of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, that addresses Einstein’s knowledge of the Michelson–Morley experiment prior to 1905: in a lecture in Chicago in 1921, Einstein referred to the experiment, mentioned when he came upon it and hinted at its influence. Arguments are presented to explain the contrast with Einstein’s later pronouncements on the role of the experiment.
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Acknowledgments
I am most grateful to Diana Kormos Buchwald for the suggestion to write this article and for very useful commentary of an earlier version. I also wish to thank Dennis Dieks, A.J. Kox, John Norton and Tilman Sauer for sharing their insight with me. Finally, I wish to thank Brenda Shorkend of the Einstein Papers Project and Harry Miller of the Wisconsin Historical Society for unearthing Einstein’s Chicago lectures.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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van Dongen, J. On the Role of the Michelson–Morley Experiment: Einstein in Chicago. Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 63, 655–663 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-009-0050-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-009-0050-5