Versuch Einer Theorie der Electrischen und Optischen Erscheinungen in Bewegten Korpern.

Leiden:: E.J. Brill, 1895., 1895. 8vo. (224 x 154 mm). 138, [1] pp. Modern quarter brown cloth and printed paper boards, gilt-stamped black leather spine label. Fine. FIRST EDITION of the second of Lorentz's seminal papers on the relationship of matter to electricity, following the publication in 1892 of his Theorie electromagnitique de Maxwell et son application aux corps mouvants. Lorentz was awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943), "in recognition of the extraordinary services they rendered by their researches (truncated) into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena." [Wasson]. "In applying Maxwell's electromagnetic theories to moving bodies, Lorentz made the fundamentally new assumption that the behavior of light and matter could be understood in terms of charged particles. The present work is the second of Lorentz's two major expositions on his electron theory of matter. . . ; it contains his equation for the "Lorentz force" connecting the continuous electric field with discrete electricity, and investigates the problem of the effects of the earth's motion through the stationary, immaterial luminiferous ether postulated in classical physics. If the earth is presumed to have an absolute velocity with relation to this ether, then it would seem to follow that this velocity can be detected through optical or electromagnetic effects of the accompanying "ether wind"; for example, it could be assumed that a beam of light shining from the direction toward which the earth is moving would reach the earth faster than one shone in the opposite direction. However, the Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment of 1887 had failed to produce evidence of any ether wind effects, a problem with which Lorentz responded with his famous contraction hypothesis, stating that all electrical particles become shortened in the direction of the earth's motion through the ether. The exact form of this hypothesis appears in the present work." [Norman]. Provenance: University of Groningen (library and release stamp on title). DSB, VIII, pp. 495-496; Norman 1388; PMM. 378b; Wasson, Nobel Prize Winners, pp. 642-645 (Inventory #: S10009)