About Hendrik Lorentz
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch theoretical physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the force acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. He was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency of the material, resulting in abnormal refractive indices. During his first 20 years at Leiden, Lorentz was primarily interested in the electromagnetic theory of electricity, magnetism, and light. His colleague and former student, Pieter Zeeman, discovered the Zeeman effect in 1896, and Lorentz supplied its theoretical interpretation. He discovered that the transition from one to another reference frame could be simplified by using a new time variable that he called local time and which depended on universal time and the location under consideration.
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