American physicist who designed the Michelson-Morley experiment — the most famous null result in physics, disproving the luminiferous ether and setting the stage for special relativity.
Michelson-Morley experiment (1887, with Edward Morley): designed an interferometer to detect the Earth's motion through the luminiferous ether — the null result (no ether drift) was the most significant null result in physics and set the stage for Einstein's special relativity. Nobel Prize in Physics (1907) — the first American to win the Nobel Physics prize. Precise measurements of the speed of light.
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