Max Abraham | |
|---|---|
 Abraham,c. 1905 | |
| Born | 26 March 1875 |
| Died | 16 November 1922(1922-11-16) (aged 47) |
| Alma mater | University of Berlin |
| Known for | Abraham–Minkowski controversy Abraham–Lorentz force |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions |
|
| Doctoral advisor | Max Planck |
| Special relativity |
|---|
 |
Max Abraham (German:[ˈaːbʀaham]; 26 March 1875 – 16 November 1922) was a Germanphysicist known for his work onelectromagnetism and his opposition to thetheory of relativity.
Abraham was born inDanzig,Imperial Germany (nowGdańsk inPoland) to a family ofJewishmerchants. His father was Moritz Abraham and his mother was Selma Moritzsohn. Attending theUniversity of Berlin, he studied underMax Planck. He graduated in 1897. For the next three years, Abraham worked as Planck's assistant.[1]
From 1900 to 1909, Abraham worked atGöttingen as aprivatdozent, an unpaid lecturing position. Abraham developed his theory of theelectron in 1902, in which he hypothesized that the electron was a perfect sphere with a charge divided evenly around its surface. Abraham's model was competing with that developed byHendrik Lorentz (1899, 1904) andAlbert Einstein (1905) which seem to have become more widely accepted; nevertheless, Abraham never gave up his model, since he considered it was based on "common sense". Abraham was a staunch opponent of the theory of relativity.[2]
In 1909 Abraham travelled to theUnited States to accept a position at theUniversity of Illinois, but ended up returning to Göttingen after a few months. He was later invited toItaly byTullio Levi-Civita, and found work as the professor ofrational mechanics at thePolitecnico di Milano university until 1914.
WhenWorld War I started, Abraham was forced to return to Germany. During this time he worked on the theory ofradio transmission. After the war, he still was not allowed back into Milan, so until 1921 he worked atStuttgart as the professor ofphysics atTechnische Hochschule.
After his work at Stuttgart, Abraham accepted the position of chair inAachen; however, before he started his work there he was diagnosed with abrain tumor. He died on 16 November 1922 inMunich, Germany.
After his death,Max Born andMax von Laue wrote about him in an obituary:He loved hisabsolute aether, hisfield equations, his rigid electron just as a youth loves his first flame, whose memory no later experience can extinguish.[3]
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