Morley, Edward Williams, , New Jersey 1838 1923 Male Chemist Physicist chemist and physicist, was born in Newark, N. J. , the son of Sardis Brewster and Anna Clarissa (Treat) Morley.
His bent toward science soon became evident, for he found among his father's books a small volume entitled Conversations in Chemistry which he read with more interest than the Arabian Nights.
Since Edward, though precocious, was very frail, his early education was acquired at home under the tutelage of his father.
When fourteen years of age he acquired a copy of Benjamin Silliman's newly published textbook on chemistry, and absorbed its contents so thoroughly that he found nothing new in his first course in chemistry in college.
He entered Williams College as a sophomore in 1857 and graduated in 1860.
During this year he mounted a transit instrument, constructed a chronograph, and made the first accurate determination of the latitude of the college observatory, which last achievement was the subject of his first scientific paper, read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in January 1865 (Proceedings, vol.
In accordance with a strong family tradition, he decided to become a minister and spent the years 1861-64 at Andover Theological Seminary.
He could read at three years of age, began the study of Latin at six, and read Greek at eleven.
He therefore stayed on at Williams for a year after graduation, working in astronomy under Prof. Albert Hopkins.
VI, 1866).
During the next few years he taught in a private school at Marlboro, Massachussets About this time, his health having improved, he was offered the pastorate of the church at Twinsburg, Ohio.
According to this hypothesis, there is a deficiency of oxygen at times of high atmospheric pressure, because downward currents bring air from high altitudes to the surface of the earth; and the results of Morley's measurements showed that this theory agreed fairly well with the facts.
From 1883 to 1894 he was engaged on his magnum opus, a study of the densities of oxygen and hydrogen and the ratio in which they combine to form water.
These experiments, of fundamental importance to modern physics, were later continued with the cooperation of Prof. Dayton C. Miller.
With the latter, Morley also determined the velocity of light in a magnetic field and studied the thermal expansion of air, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide.
For these last experiments he devised a new form of manometer by which differences of gaseous pressure as small as 1/10, 000 millimeter of mercury could be measured.
He also was engaged in other researches on the expansion of metallic bars, the conduction of heat through water vapor, the relative efficiency of various drying agents, and the vapor tension of mercury.
He received honorary degrees from many institutions and was awarded the Sir Humphry Davy Medal by the Royal Society of London in 1907, the Elliot Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute, 1912, and the Willard Gibbs Medal from the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society in 1917.
He published or read fifty-five scientific papers.
Chem.
Soc.
of London, Trans. , vol.
CXXIII, pt.
2 (1923), and Memoirs Nat.
Acad.
Sci. , vol.
XXI (1926), with bibliog. ; O. F. Tower in Science, Apr. 13, 1923, the Jour.
Am.
Chem.
Soc. , June 1923, and Bull.
Western Reserve Univ. , 1923, with bibliog. ; Hartford Times, Feb. 24, 1923. ]
He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1895 and of the American Chemical Society in 1899.
During this same period Morley was collaborating with A. A. Michelson [q. v. ] in developing the interferometer, an instrument for measuring lengths in terms of the wave length of light, which device they used in attempting to determine the motion of the earth with reference to the luminiferous ether.
He took up his duties in Hudson in January 1869, and just before moving thither married Isabella Ashley Birdsall of West Winsted, Connecticut They had no children.
Both parents were of good New England stock; the father was a Congregational minister and the mother had been a teacher under Catharine E. Beecher q.v..
Both parents were of good New England stock; the father was a Congregational minister and the mother had been a teacher under Catharine E. Beecher q.v..
Both parents were of good New England stock; the father was a Congregational minister and the mother had been a teacher under Catharine E. Beecher q.v..
