Physics Faces

Hedrick Antoon Lorentz  (1853-1928)

 “Maxwell’s electromagnetic field equations received their connection with the sources of these fields (the Lorentz force law) in the work of Lorentz whose substantive work was on the theory of the electron. Lorentz was a gifted lecturer and writer who became the leading statesman of the late nineteenth century world of physics; he also inspired great affection and was beloved by generations of students and colleagues, most notably Einstein. Lorentz discovered the transformations of space-time required for the invariance of the Maxwell equations leading, incomprehensively, to the relativity of time and Lorentz contraction of bodies. Einstein used Lorentz transformations as the definitive insight into the geometric structure of space-time; but Lorentz, to the end of his life, regarded them as a mathematical artifice that would ultimately be reinterpreted in classical concepts based on absolute time.”

From: The Shaggy Steed of Physics by David Oliver, Springer-Verlag, 1994.