After the Gold Rush

Abstract “After the Gold Rush: The Trials of Albert Michelson” tells the story of Michelson’s youth growing up in the gold fields of California before he was granted an extraordinary appointment to Annapolis by President Grant. Michelson invented his interferometer while visiting Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin, Germany, as he sought to detect the motion of the Earth through the luminiferous ether, but no motion was detected. After returning to the States and a faculty position at Case University, he met Edward Morley, and the two continued the search for the Earth’s motion, concluding definitively its absence. The Michelson interferometer launched a menagerie of interferometers, including the Fabry–Perot, that ushered in the golden age of interferometry.