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Pieter Zeeman

Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1943)

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Born
May 25, 1865
Died
October 9, 1943
Zodiac sign
Gemini
Birth year
1865

About Pieter Zeeman

Pieter Zeeman was a Dutch experimental physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz for their discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. Hendrik Lorentz first heard about Zeeman's observations on Saturday 31 October 1896 at the meeting of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, where these results were communicated by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. He discovered that a spectral line is split into several components in the presence of a magnetic field. Zeeman became interested in physics at an early age.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Pieter Zeeman was born

Pieter Zeeman was born in 1865. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1865

  • Best-selling bookAlice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineCivil War ends — Lincoln assassinated
  • Technology milestone13th Amendment abolishes slavery
  • World population~1.45B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderAbraham Lincoln / Andrew Johnson
  • U.S. population33.5M

1865 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Pieter Zeeman's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18652026
Population33.5M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.