Dayton Miller

Dayton Clarence Miller ( March 13, 1866 *, † February 22, 1941 ) was an American physicist.

Life

Dayton C. Miller received his doctorate in astronomy at Princeton University. From 1890 he worked at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio as a teacher in mathematics, physics and astronomy. He became friends with the much older Edward Morley.

With him he took off in 1900 continues the aether drift experiments that Morley had begun together with Albert Abraham Michelson 1887 in Cleveland. With that very interferometer they found in 1904 also a zero result. In the following years, Miller made ​​more than 200,000 measurements to ether drift experiments, which were partially to small but non-zero results, so Miller wrote in publications since 1926.

However, its results could not be reproduced in other experiments, and in addition, its measurement methods by Robert S. Shankland and others were criticized. See also criticism of the theory of relativity # Experimental " refutations ".

Music

Miller dealt not only scientifically, but also as a hobby with music. He played flute progressed and had a collection of more than 1,650 flutes. This collection, which also, inter alia, contains extensive literature and iconographic representations with respect to the flute, now kept at the Washington Library of Congress.

He also invented in 1908 a kind of forerunner of today oscilloscope, the so-called Phonodeik.