Issues

A boy who grew up in Western mining camps became the preeminent master of precision measurement by light waves, largely through his playful work with interferometers and his quest to know the ‘innards’ of his instruments.

Rudely uniting absolute space and universal time into a single, changeable ‘space‐time,’ the theory has become a fact of life, part and parcel of our view of nature; this essay illustrates its impact by means of some early and late examples of its use.

Recently discovered letters, written at the turn of the century to his fiancée, shed new light on the origin of the special theory of relativity.

The year of the famous ether drift experiment and the use of light waves as a standard of length was also a year for personal problems, including a damaging scandal.

Recent experiments that provide the strictest limits on violations of Lorentz invariance may be viewed as direct descendants of the Michelson‐Morley experiment.

Report to the APS of the Study Group on Science and Technology of Directed Energy Weapons