Pieter Zeeman (1865–1943) had been searching for the influence of magnetic fields on spectral lines since 1892. Michael Faraday's (1791–1867) demonstration of the rotation of the plane polarization of light in electric fields had led Faraday himself and several other experimenters to expect such an influence. But Zeeman only succeeded in late 1896, after having installed a strong Rühmkorff electromagnet and a large concave grating, which latter he had obtained personally from its inventor Henry Augustus Rowland (1848–1901). For discovering the effect bearing his name, Zeeman obtained the Nobel Prize for physics of 1902, together with the theoretical physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928), who provided its classical theoretical interpretation.

Editors and Affiliations

1. Department of Physics, The City College of New York, 138th St. & Convent Ave., New York, NY, 10031, USA

   Daniel Greenberger

2. Section for the History of Science & Technology, University of Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, Stuttgart, D-70174, Germany

   Klaus Hentschel

3. Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Bradford, Bradford, BD7 1DP, UK

   Friedel Weinert

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