Michelson Memorial Lecture Series

Sponsored by the United States Naval Academy Class of 1969

The Michelson Memorial Lecture Series commemorates the achievements of Albert A. Michelson, whose experiments on the measurement of the speed of light were initiated while he was a military instructor at the U. S. Naval Academy. These studies not only advanced the science of physics but resulted in his selection as the first Nobel Laureate in science from the United States.

Each year since 1981, a distinguished scientist has come to the Naval Academy to present the Michelson Lecture. These scientists have represented a variety of scientific disciplines, including chemistry, physics, mathematics, oceanography, and computer science.

Complete List of Distinguished Speakers

More on the History of the Michelson Lecture Series

...By the 1870’s the program at the Academy had changed significantly. Now midshipmen could expect to be students for four years instead of five (three of these aboard ship), and there was a much greater emphasis on academic subjects rather than at sea training. This new format earned the Academy the award at the Paris Exposition of 1879. The school was rated as having the best educational system in the United States.

The last thirty years of the nineteenth century saw a flurry of advances in science: physics came into its own and the experimentation going on would lead Albert Einstein to postulate his now-famous Theory of Relativity. The Naval Academy played a small role on the way to Relativity. In the late 1870’s, a Navy lieutenant and instructor in the Academy’s Department of Physics, Albert Michelson, performed his now-famous experiments to measure the velocity of light. These experiments were fundamental to the eventual development, by Einstein, of the Relativity Theory. In 1907 Michelson, a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1873, became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Today, the science wing (dedicated in the spring of 1969) at the Academy is named Michelson Hall.

...Taken from "Annapolis, the United States Naval Academy," by David Pahl, 1987, Exeter Books.

Sponsored by the United States Naval Academy Class of 1969