Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon, << LOHR ehnts, HEHN drihk AHN tohn >> (1853-1928), was a Dutch physicist. He became famous for his electron theory of matter, and shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in physics with Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman for explaining the effects of magnetism on light. See Zeeman effect.
Lorentz assumed that matter and the ether interact only by means of electrically charged particles. The ether was a medium that Lorentz and other scientists of his day had reason to believe occupied all space. Lorentz’s electron theory suggested that moving bodies are shortened in their direction of motion through the ether. This shortening occurs because motion affects forces between the charged particles that make up matter. The change in length actually occurs. It is too small to notice, however, except in precise experiments carried on at very high speeds. The equations that show how motion deforms bodies are called the Lorentz transformations. See Relativity. Lorentz was born at Arnhem, the Netherlands, on July 18, 1853. He graduated from, and taught at, Leiden University. He died on Feb. 4, 1928.
