| Loránd Eötvös | |
|---|---|
 Loránd (Roland) Eötvös
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| Born | July 27, 1848 |
| Died | April 8, 1919 |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Fields | Physics |
| Known for | Eötvös experiment Eötvös rule |
Baron Loránd von Eötvös (Hungarian: Vásárosnaményi Báró Eötvös Loránd or Loránd Eötvös, pronounced [ˈloraːnd ˈøtvøʃ]; July 27, 1848 - April 8, 1919), more commonly called Baron Roland von Eötvös in the English literature,[1] was a Hungarian physicist. He is remembered today largely for his work on gravitation and surface tension.
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Life
Born in 1848, the year of the Hungarian revolution, Eötvös was the son of József Eötvös, a well-known poet, writer, and liberal politician, who was cabinet minister at the time, and played an important part in 19th century Hungarian intellectual and political life.
Loránd Eötvös first studied law, but soon switched to physics and went abroad to study in Heidelberg and Königsberg. After earning his doctorate, he became a university professor in Budapest and played a leading part in Hungarian science for almost half a century. He gained international recognition first by his innovative work on capillarity, then by his refined experimental methods and extensive field studies in gravity.
Eötvös is remembered today for his experimental work on gravity, in particular his study of the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass (the so-called weak equivalence principle) and his study of the gravitational gradient on the Earth's surface. The weak equivalence principle plays a prominent role in relativity theory and the Eötvös experiment was cited by Albert Einstein in his 1916 paper The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. Measurements of the gravitational gradient are important in applied geophysics, such as the location of petroleum deposits. The CGS unit for gravitational gradient is named the eotvos in his honor.
From 1886 until his death, Loránd Eötvös researched and taught in the University of Budapest, which in 1950 was renamed after him (Eötvös Loránd University).
Eötvös is buried in the Kerepesi Cemetery in Budapest, Hungary.[2]
See also
- eotvos, a unit of gravitational gradient
- Eötvös effect, a concept in geodesy
- Eötvös number, a concept in fluid dynamics
- Eötvös (crater) on the moon
- Eötvös rule for predicting surface tension dependent on temperature
- Lorandite, a mineral named after Loránd Eötvös
References
- ^ L. Bod, E. Fishbach, G. Marx, and Maria Náray-Ziegler: One hundred years of the Eötvös experiment, - Acta Physica Hungarica 69/3-4 (1991) 335-355
- ^ See this site for a photograph of his gravesite.
Further reading
- Antall, J. (1971), "[The Pest School of Medicine and the health policy of the Centralists. On the centennary of the death of József Eötvös]", Orvosi hetilap 112 (19): 1083–9, 1971 May 9, PMID:4932574, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4932574
External links
- Eötvös and STEP (biographical remarks and a summary of his research)
- Eötvös Loránd Virtual Museum
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