FUN FACT: ALBERT MICHELSON, USNA GRAD

The first American and Jew to receive the Nobel Prize in Sciences was a USNA graduate (Class of 1873). In 1907 Michelson had the honor of being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and is best remembered for his precise measurements of the speed of light.

Albert Abraham Michelson was a notable Prussian-born American physicist who was awarded by President Ulysses S. Grant a special appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1869. Throughout his four years as a midshipman at the Academy, Michelson excelled in optics, heat, climatology, and technical drawing.

After graduating in 1873, and two years at sea, he returned to the Naval Academy in 1875 to become a physics and chemistry instructor until 1879. Fascinated by science, he carried out his first experiments on the speed of light as part of a class demonstration in Annapolis in 1877.

In 1907, Michelson had the honor of being the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics “”for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid””, the first of many honours he was to receive. Moreover, a crater on the Moon is also named after him.