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Woldemar Voigt (; 2 September 1850 – 13 December 1919) was a German
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...
, who taught at the Georg August University of Göttingen. Voigt eventually went on to head the Mathematical Physics Department at Göttingen and was succeeded in 1914 by
Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye (; ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemistry, physical chemist, and List of Nobel laureates in Chemistry, Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petr ...
, who took charge of the theoretical department of the Physical Institute. In 1921, Debye was succeeded by
Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a ...
.


Biography

Voigt was born in
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
, and died in
Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
. He was a student of
Franz Ernst Neumann Franz Ernst Neumann (11 September 1798 – 23 May 1895) was a German mineralogist, physicist and mathematician. Biography Neumann was born in Joachimsthal, Margraviate of Brandenburg, near Berlin. In 1815 he interrupted his studies at Berlin to ...
. He worked on
crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macr ...
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...
,
thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws o ...
and
electro-optics Electro–optics is a branch of electrical engineering, electronic engineering, materials science, and material physics involving components, electronic devices such as lasers, laser diodes, LEDs, waveguides, etc. which operate by the p ...
. His main work was the ''Lehrbuch der Kristallphysik'' (textbook on crystal physics), first published in 1910. He discovered the Voigt effect in 1898. The word
tensor In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tens ...
in its current meaning was introduced by him in 1898.
Voigt profile The Voigt profile (named after Woldemar Voigt) is a probability distribution given by a convolution of a Cauchy-Lorentz distribution and a Gaussian distribution. It is often used in analyzing data from spectroscopy or diffraction. Definition ...
and Voigt notation are named after him. He was also an amateur musician and became known as a Bach expert (see External links). In 1887 Voigt formulated a form of the
Lorentz transformation In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of linear transformations from a coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity relative to the former. The respective inverse transformation i ...
between a rest frame of reference and a frame moving with speed v in the x direction. However, as Voigt himself said, the transformation was aimed at a specific problem and did not carry with it the idea of a general coordinate transformation, as is the case in relativity theory.


The Voigt transformation

In modern notation Voigt's transformation was :x' = x - vt, :y' = y/\gamma, :z' = z/\gamma, :t' = t - vx/c^2, where \gamma = 1/\sqrt. If the right-hand sides of his equations are multiplied by \gamma, they become the modern
Lorentz transformation In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of linear transformations from a coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity relative to the former. The respective inverse transformation i ...
.
Hermann Minkowski Hermann Minkowski (; ; 22 June 1864 – 12 January 1909) was a German mathematician and professor at Königsberg, Zürich and Göttingen. He created and developed the geometry of numbers and used geometrical methods to solve problems in numb ...
said in 1908 that the transformations which play the main role in the principle of relativity were first examined by Voigt in 1887. Also
Hendrik Lorentz Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (; 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the Lorent ...
(1909) is on record as saying that he could have taken these transformations into his theory of electrodynamics, if only he had known of them, rather than developing his own. It is interesting then to examine the consequences of these transformations from this point of view. Lorentz might then have seen that the transformation introduced relativity of simultaneity, and also
time dilation In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational ...
. However, the magnitude of the dilation was greater than the now accepted value in the Lorentz transformations. Moving clocks, obeying Voigt's time transformation, indicate an elapsed time \Delta t_\text = \gamma^ \Delta t = \gamma^ \Delta t_\text, while stationary clocks indicate an elapsed time \Delta t. Since Voigt's transformation preserves the speed of light in all frames, the
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 1887 ...
and the
Kennedy–Thorndike experiment The Kennedy–Thorndike experiment, first conducted in 1932 by Roy J. Kennedy and Edward M. Thorndike, is a modified form of the Michelson–Morley experimental procedure, testing special relativity. The modification is to make one arm of the class ...
can not distinguish between the two transformations. The crucial question is the issue of time dilation. The experimental measurement of
time dilation In physics and relativity, time dilation is the difference in the elapsed time as measured by two clocks. It is either due to a relative velocity between them ( special relativistic "kinetic" time dilation) or to a difference in gravitational ...
by Ives and Stillwell (1938) and others settled the issue in favor of the Lorentz transformation.


See also

* Dyakonov–Voigt wave * Stark effect * German inventors and discoverers


References

;Primary Sources *; This article ends with the announcement that in a forthcoming article the principles worked out so far shall be applied to the problems of reflection and refraction. The article contains on p. 235, last paragraph, and on p. 236, 2nd paragraph, a judgment on the Michelson experiment of 1886, which Voigt, after a correspondence with H. A. Lorentz in 1887 and 1888, has partly withdrawn in the article announced, namely in a footnote in Voigt (1888). According to Voigt's first judgment, the Michelson experiment must yield a null result, independently of whether the Earth transports the luminiferous aether with it (Fizeau's 1st aether hypothesis), or whether the Earth moves through an entirely independent, self-consistent universal
luminiferous aether Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space (a vacuum), s ...
(Fizeau's 2nd aether hypothesis). *; In a footnote on p. 390 of this article, Voigt corrects his earlier judgment, made in ''Göttinger Nachrichten'' No. 8, p. 235 and p. 236 (1887), and states indirectly that, after a correspondence with H. A. Lorentz, he can no longer maintain that in the case of the validity of Fizeau's 2nd aether hypothesis the Michelson experiment must yield a null result too. *; For Minkowski's statement see p. 762. *; See p. 198. * Lorentz 1904, Electromagnetic phenomena in a system moving with any velocity smaller than that of light ;Secondary sources * * Ernst, Andreas & Hsu Jong-Ping (June 2001)
''First Proposal of the Universal Speed of Light by Voigt in 1887''
pdf
Chinese Journal of Physics The Chinese Journal of Physics is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of physics. It is published by Elsevier on behalf of the Physical Society of Taiwan. The journal publishes reviews, articles, and refereed confere ...


External links

* *
The relativity of light (MathPages)

Bach expert Woldemar Voigt
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Voigt, Woldemar 1850 births 1919 deaths 19th-century German physicists Scientists from Leipzig People from the Kingdom of Saxony Leipzig University alumni University of Königsberg alumni University of Königsberg faculty University of Göttingen faculty Foreign Members of the Royal Society 20th-century German physicists