The Edward Williams Morley Family Papers consist of correspondence and a small number of miscellaneous papers of members of the Morley family from 1828 to 1922.
Edward Williams Morley was an American chemist who is best known for his collaboration with the physicist A.A. Michelson in an attempt to measure the..
Edward W. Morley
19/20th-century American scientist
For the Australian politician, see Edward Morley (politician).
Edward Williams Morley (January 29, 1838 – February 24, 1923) was an American scientist known for his precise and accurate measurement of the atomic weight of oxygen, and for the Michelson–Morley experiment.
Biography
Morley was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Anna Clarissa Treat and the Reverend Sardis Brewster Morley. Both parents were of early colonial ancestry and of purely British origin. He grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Edward Williams Morley was born on 29 January 1838 in Newark, New Jersey, the eldest child of Sardis Brewster Morley, a Congregational minister, and Anna.During his childhood, he suffered much from ill health and was therefore educated by his father at home until the age of nineteen.[1]
In 1857 Morley entered Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts, his father's alma mater.
He received his A.B. in 1860 and his master's degree in 1863. Around 1860 he gradually shifted his attention from chemistry, which fascinated him since he was child, to optics and astronomy.