The Michelson–Morley Award is a science award that originated from the Michelson Award that was established in 1963 by the Case Institute of Technology. It was renamed in 1968 by the newly formed Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) after the federation between the Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University. The award continued until 1992, and was re-established in 2002. The award in its various forms is named for physics professor

Albert A. Michelson Albert Abraham Michelson FFRS HFRSE (surname pronunciation anglicized as "Michael-son", December 19, 1852 – May 9, 1931) was a German-born American physicist of Polish/Jewish origin, known for his work on measuring the speed of light and esp ...

(Case School of Applied Sciences) and chemistry professor Edward W. Morley (Western Reserve University) who carried out the famous

Michelson–Morley experiment The Michelson–Morley experiment was an attempt to detect the existence of the luminiferous aether, a supposed medium permeating space that was thought to be the carrier of light waves. The experiment was performed between April and July 188 ...

of 1887.

Recipients

Michelson Award *1963 –

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (March 13, 1899 – October 27, 1980) was an American physicist and mathematician. He was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, for his contributions to the understanding of the behavior of electronic magnetism ...

*1964 –

Haldan Keffer Hartline Haldan Keffer Hartline (December 22, 1903 – March 17, 1983) was an American physiologist who was a co-recipient (with George Wald and Ragnar Granit) of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in analyzing the neurophysiolog ...

*1965 – Luis W. Alvarez *1966 – Edwin H. Land *1967 –

Martin Schwarzschild Martin Schwarzschild (May 31, 1912 – April 10, 1997) was a German-American astrophysicist. Biography Schwarzschild was born in Potsdam into a distinguished German Jewish academic family. His father was the physicist Karl Schwarzschild and ...

Michelson–Morley Award *1968 – John Bardeen *1970 – Charles H. Townes *1976 –

John D. Roberts John Dombrowski Roberts (June 8, 1918 – October 29, 2016) was an American chemist. He made contributions to the integration of physical chemistry, spectroscopy, and organic chemistry for the understanding of chemical reaction rates. Ano ...

*1977 – Gene M. Amdahl *1978 – Harry George Drickamer *1979 – Hans Liepmann *1980 –

Frank Albert Cotton Frank Albert Cotton Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (April 9, 1930 – February 20, 2007) was an American chemist. He was the W.T. Doherty-Welch Foundation Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University. He authored over ...

*1981 – Francis Crick *1982 – Michael Ellis Fisher *1983 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar *1984 –

Paul Lauterbur Paul Christian Lauterbur (May 6, 1929 – March 27, 2007) was an American chemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 with Peter Mansfield for his work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) poss ...

*1985 – Paul Fleury *1986 –

Richard Zare Richard Neil Zare (born November 19, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio) is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Zare has made a considerable impact in physical ...

*1987 – Robert H. Dicke and George A. Olah *1988 – John J. Hopfield *1989 – Herman F. Mark *1990 –

Frederick Reines Frederick Reines ( ; March 16, 1918 – August 26, 1998) was an American physicist. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment. He may be the only scientist i ...

*1991 – John Cahn *1992 – Watt W. Webb *2002 –

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direc ...

*2003 – Stephen Hawking *2020 – Jack Kincaid The 1987 award was jointly to a physicist and chemist to honour the centenary of the Michelson–Morley experiment.

References

Sources

Michelson–Morley Award Lecture
(Case Western Reserve University)
The Michelson Lectures and Awards
p. 339 o

(2005) by William Fickinger, Professor Emeritus (Appendix D: Programs and Lecture Series)
Happenings
''The Scientist'' (1 June 1987) {{DEFAULTSORT:Michelson-Morley Award American science and technology awards