Pieter Zeeman

Pieter Zeeman got married to Johanna Elisabeth Lebret in 1895. The couple had 4 children - a son and 3 daughters.

Pieter Zeeman died in Amsterdam at the age of 78 on 9 October, 1943.

Pieter Zeeman was born to Catharinus Forandinus Zeeman and Wilhelmina Zeeman on 25, May, 1865 in a tiny village located in Schouwen-Duiveland in Netherlands. Zeeman’s father was a clergyman in the village.

Pieter Zeeman was educated at his local school in Zierikzee and displayed a deep interest in the sciences from an early age. In 1883, he created an illustration of Aurora Borealis that took place that year and the illustration was published by the British scientific journal ‘Nature’.

After passing high school at the age of 18 in 1883, he was sent to Delft in order to learn the classical languages and he had to learn those languages since it was a compulsory requirement for anyone willing to go to university.

After completing his training in the classical languages, Zeeman enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1885. He was taught physics by such luminaries of the time as Hendrik Lorentz and before long he worked as Lorentz’s assistant at the university.

It was in the year 1893 that Pieter Zeeman presented his doctoral thesis at the University of Leiden and the subject was Kerr effect. He was awarded his doctorate and spent some time at Friedrich Kohlrausch Institute located in Strasbourg but he returned to take up the position of a Privatdozent or senior research and teacher at the University of Leiden.

Pieter Zeeman’ time at the University of Leiden as a Privatdozent took an unexpected turn in the year 1896 when he was fired from the university by his supervisor when he conducted experiments in the laboratory in relation to spectral lines in a direct violation of orders. The research on spectral lines would go on to become the bedrock of his career as a scientist.

Zeeman continued his research on spectral lines. He worked diligently on his research in 1896 and in the same year his findings at Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences was recognized by eminent scientists. His old mentor from University, Hendrik Lorentz took an interest in the findings and it soon became well known.

Following the acceptance of his theory on spectral lines, Pieter Zeeman was appointed as a lecturer of physics at the University of Amsterdam in the year 1897. He was promoted to the post of a professor 3 years later and it was in his fifth year at the University of Amsterdam that Zeeman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz for the Zeeman Effect.

It was in the year 1908 that Pieter Zeeman was made the Director of the Institute of Physics located in Amsterdam and in the process he succeeded another giant of the world of physics research in Van der Waals. He was involved in advanced research for the rest of his career and published papers on gravitation as well as Magneto-optics that dealt with the behavior of light in a moving medium.

Zeeman also served as the Secretary of the Mathematical-Physical Section at the Royal Academy of Sciences for 8 years starting from 1912. He became a member of the Academy 14 years prior to his appointment as the secretary.

Pieter Zeeman is considered among the foremost physicists of his time and during his career he worked on a lot of concepts; however it was his work on spectral lines that came to be known as the ‘Zeeman Effect’ that is without doubt his greatest work. He shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.