- Irish physicist
known for his work on electromagnetics. In 1892 he explained the anomalous
results of the Michelson-Morley experiment 1887 by supposing that bodies
moving through the ether contracted as their velocity increased, an
effect since known as the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction.
Fitzgerald was born in Dublin and studied there at Trinity College,
where he was professor of natural and experimental philosophy from 1888.
Fitzgerald predicted that a rapidly oscillating (that is, alternating)
electric current should result in the radiation of electromagnetic waves
- a prediction proved correct in the late 1880s by Heinrich Hertz's
early experiments with radio, which Fitzgerald brought to the attention
of the scientific community in Britain.
Considering the Michelson-Morley result - or lack of result - Fitzgerald
worked out a simple mathematical relationship to show how velocity affects
physical dimensions.
The idea was independently arrived at and developed by Dutch physicist
Hendrik Lorentz in 1895. In 1905, the contraction hypothesis was incorporated
and given a different interpretation in
Albert Einstein's general theory
of relativity.
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