PIETER ZEEMAN --1902 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

PIETER ZEEMAN was born on May 25, 1865, at Zonnemaire, a small village in the isle of Schouwen, Zeeland, The Netherlands.
After having finished his secondary school education at Zierikzee, he went to Delft for two years to receive tuition in the classical languages,
It was here also that he came into contact with Kamerlingh Onnes, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics for 1913, who was twelve years, his senior.
Zeeman’s wide reading, which included a proper mastery of works such as Maxwell’s Heat, and his passion for performing experiments amazed Kamerlingh Onnes in no small degree, and formed the basis for a fruitful friendship between the two scientists.
Zeeman’s talent for natural science first became apparent in 1883, when, while still attending the secondary school, he gave an apt description and drawing of an aurora borealis- then clearly to be observed in his country.
Zeeman’s main theme of investigation has always concerned optical phenomena. his first treatise Measures relatives du phenomena de Kerr, written in 1892, was rewarded with a Gold Medal from the Dutch Society of Sciences at Haarlem, his doctor’s thesis dealt with the same subject.
In Strasbourg he studied the propagation and absorption of electrical waves in fluids.
His principal work, however, was the study of the influence of magnetism on the nature of light radiation, started by him in the summer of 1896, which formed a logical continuation of his investigation into the Kerr effect.
The discovery of the so-called Zeeman Effect, for which he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of the extraordinary service for researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena, the prize was shared by Zeeman with his teacher Lorentz
The importance of the discovery at once be judged by the fact that at one stroke the phenomenon not only confirmed Lorentz’ theoretical conclusions with regard to the state of polarization of the light emitted by flames, but also demonstrated the negative nature of the oscillating particles, as well as the unexpectedly high ration of their .charge and mass (e/m)
During the last year of his professorship he suffered from ill-health. He died after a short illness on October 9, 1943.