Albert Abraham Michaelson, c mid-20th century

Albert Abraham Michelson, 1852-1931, was an American physicist known for his work on the speed of light, and for the Michelson-Morley experiment. He was born in the Kingdom of Prussia, present-day Poland, and moved to the US in 1855 at the age of two. He trained at the US Naval Academy from 1869, graduating in 1873, and eventually leaving the Navy in 1881. He began working for the Case School of Applied Science in 1883. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1902. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907, becoming the first American to win the Nobel Prize in a science. He was also awarded the Copley Medal in 1907. He was the first head of the physics department of University of Chicago. He was married twice, once in 1877 to Margaret Hemingway, but divorced in 1898. He then re-married in 1899 to Edna Stanton. He had six children total, two sons and a daughter with Hemingway, and three daughters with Stanton. Michelson returned to military service in 1918, and was briefly in active duty but released in 1921. He died aged 78 in 1931."