Walther Ritz
| Walther Ritz | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
22 February 1878 Sion, Switzerland |
| Died | 7 July 1909 (aged 31) Göttingen |
| Notable awards | Leconte Prize (1909) |
Walther Ritz (22 February 1878 – 7 July 1909) was a Swiss theoretical physicist. He is most famous for his work with Johannes Rydberg on the Rydberg–Ritz combination principle. Ritz is also known for the variational method named after him, the Ritz method.
His father, Raphael Ritz, a native of Valais, was a well-known landscape and interior scenes artist. His mother was the daughter of the engineer Noerdlinger of Tübingen. Ritz studied in Zurich and Göttingen. His death at the age of 31 has been attributed to tuberculosis, contracted in 1900, and to pleurisy.
Not so well known is the fact that in 1908 Ritz produced a lengthy criticism of Maxwell–Lorentz electromagnetic theory, in which he contended that the theory's connection with the luminescent ether (see Lorentz ether theory) made it "essentially inappropriate to express the comprehensive laws for the propagation of electrodynamic actions."
Ritz pointed out seven problems with Maxwell–Lorentz electromagnetic field equations:
Instead he indicated that light is not propagated (in a medium) but is projected.
...
Wikipedia