Physicist — Loránd (Roland) Eötvös (Buda, 1848 – Budapest, 1919) was a Hungarian physicist, professor in Budapest and a leading figure of late-nineteenth-century experimental physics. He is famous above all for the extremely precise experiments with which he verified the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass, a result that would become one of the experimental foundations of Einstein’s general relativity. He perfected the torsion balance, turning it into an extraordinarily sensitive instrument, now known as the Eötvös balance, also used in geophysics to measure variations in the Earth’s gravitational field. He also studied the surface tension of liquids, formulating a law for its dependence on temperature. In his honour, a unit of measurement for the gravitational gradient is named the eötvös.
Trivia
A keen mountaineer, Eötvös climbed numerous Dolomite peaks, and one Dolomite spire, the Cima di Eötvös in the Sella group, was named in his honour.
Theories and contributions
- Equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass — Extremely precise experimental verification that inertial mass and gravitational mass coincide, the basis of the equivalence principle.
- Eötvös law — Describes the dependence of a liquid’s surface tension on temperature, vanishing near the critical point.
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