May 25, 1865 - Birth of Pieter Zeeman, Nobel Prize for his studies on the influence of magnetism on radiation

Pieter Zeeman

(Zonnemaire, 1865 - Amsterdam, 1943) Dutch physicist. He completed higher studies in Physics at the University of Leiden; at this same university he taught from 1897 to 1900. From 1900 he was a professor at the University of Amsterdam and from 1908 he held the position of director of the Amsterdam Institute of Physics.

Zeeman estudió las conexiones establecidas entre la luz y el magnetismo, aportando de igual modo la posibilidad de identificar posteriormente al electrón y de construir una base sobre la cual poner a prueba la validez de las teorías mecánico-cuánticas acerca de la estructura atómica.

He began by observing that when a magnetic field was applied to sodium or lithium flames, the lines in the flame's emission spectrum exhibited an apparent broadening. He located the origin of the phenomenon in the decomposition of the lines into two or three thinner ones. His observations were in line with Lorentz's results, based on his classical theory of light, interpreted as the product of electronic vibration inside atoms.

The ordinary Zeeman effect manifests itself when a spectral line decomposes in two, under the effect of the application of an intense magnetic field parallel to the trajectory described by the light, or in three if the field is perpendicular. In any case, and in general, the atoms usually present this anomalous effect that implies the decomposition similar to that of the previous case, but in numerous lines close to each other.

Zeeman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1902, together with Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, for their studies on the reactions between magnetism and light radiation and for demonstrating the separation of spectral lines under the action of magnetic fields in 1896.