Zeeman, Pieter

Born Zonnemaire, The Netherlands, 25 May 1865

Died Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 9 October 1943

Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman made the laboratory discovery of the effect bearing his name, in which spectral lines emitted or absorbed by atoms in magnetic fields are slightly shifted in wavelength and polarized. He shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz who had immediately provided a theoretical explanation of the observation for “their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena.”

Zeeman was educated at the University of Leiden in the laboratory directed by Keike Kamerlingh Onnes (Nobel Prize 1913 for his discovery of liquid helium), receiving his Ph.D. in 1893. He remained for several years as a Privatdozent and lecturer, before being appointed to a professorship at the University of Amsterdam and, in 1908, also as director of the Physical Institute there.

The critical experiments were done in Leiden in 1896, apparently over some considerable...