Albert Michelson devoted his life almost exclusively to the study of one subject: light. For his accomplishments in the study of optics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1907, the first American ever to receive that prestigious award. In experiments carried out over nearly half a century, Michelson repeatedly refined his attempts to determine the speed of light, a topic on which he became the world's foremost authority, and attained an accuracy of about three parts in a million for the value of this constant. In addition to his work on the speed of light, Michelson became an expert on the use of optical techniques to make a wide variety of physical measurements.

Albert Abraham Michelson was born on December 19, 1852, in Strelno, Prussia, not far from the Polish border. At the age of two, he came to the United States with his parents, Samuel and Rosalie...