What nationality was the man who determined that light has a finite speed?
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Rømer's determination of the speed of light Rømer's determination of the speed of light was the demonstration in 1676 that light has a finite speed, and so does not travel instantaneously. The discovery is usually attributed to Danish astronomer Ole Rømer (1644–1710), who was working at the Royal Observatory in Paris at the time.
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Ole Rømer Ole Christensen Rømer (] ; 25 September 1644 – 19 September 1710) was a Danish astronomer who in 1676 made the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.
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Law of Continuity The Law of Continuity is a heuristic principle introduced by Gottfried Leibniz based on earlier work by Nicholas of Cusa and Johannes Kepler. It is the principle that "whatever succeeds for the finite, also succeeds for the infinite". Kepler used it to calculate the area of the circle by representing the latter as an infinite-sided polygon with infinitesimal sides, and adding the areas of infinitely-many triangles with infinitesimal bases. Leibniz used the principle to extend concepts such as arithmetic operations, from ordinary numbers to infinitesimals, laying the groundwork for infinitesimal calculus. A mathematical implementation of the law of continuity is provided by the transfer principle in the context of the hyperreal numbers.
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Manne Siegbahn Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn {'1': ", '2': ", '3': 'ForMemRS', '4': "} (3 December 1886 – 26 September 1978) was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924 "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy".
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John Clayton Taylor John Clayton Taylor {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} (born 4 August 1930) is a British mathematical physicist. He is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge and an Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College.
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Gustav Herglotz Gustav Herglotz (2 February 1881 – 22 March 1953) was a German Bohemian mathematician. He is best known for his works on the theory of relativity and seismology.
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Laplace's demon In the history of science, Laplace's demon was the first published articulation of causal or scientific determinism by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the Demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
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Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal ( ; ] ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method.
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Abraham Zelmanov Abraham Zelmanov (May 15, 1913 – February 2, 1987), was a prominent scientist working in the General Theory of Relativity and cosmology. He first constructed, in 1944, the complete mathematical method to calculate physical observable quantities in the General Theory of Relativity (the theory of chronometric invariants). Applying the mathematical apparatus, in the 1940s, he established the basics of the theory of inhomogeneous anisotropic universe, where he determined specific kinds of all cosmological models — scenarios of evolution — which could be theoretically conceivable for a truly inhomogeneous and anisotropic Universe in the framework of Einstein's theory.
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Evangelista Torricelli Evangelista Torricelli (] ,    ); 15 October 1608 – 25 October 1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician, best known for his invention of the barometer, but is also known for his advances in optics and work on the method of indivisibles.
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James Lighthill Sir Michael James Lighthill, {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} (23 January 1924 – 17 July 1998) was a British applied mathematician, known for his pioneering work in the field of aeroacoustics.
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Charles Babbage Charles Babbage {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} ( ; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.
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IEEE Maxwell Award James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE, is the father of electromagnetic waves, known for his famous
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Andrew Gray (physicist) Dr Andrew Gray {'1': ", '2': ", '3': 'FRS FRSE', '4': "} (2 July 1847 – 10 October 1925) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician.
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John Lighton Synge John Lighton Synge ( ; 23 March 1897 – 30 March 1995) was an Irish mathematician and physicist, whose seven decade career included significant periods in Ireland, Canada, and the USA. He was a prolific author and influential mentor, and is credited with the introduction of a new geometrical approach to the theory of relativity.
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Rudolph Minkowski Rudolph Minkowski (born Rudolf Leo Bernhard Minkowski ; ] ; May 28, 1895 – January 4, 1976) was a German-American astronomer.
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Shin'ichirō Tomonaga Shin'ichirō Tomonaga (朝永 振一郎 , Tomonaga Shin'ichirō , March 31, 1906 – July 8, 1979) , usually cited as Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in English, was a Japanese physicist, influential in the development of quantum electrodynamics, work for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 along with Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger.
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Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (] ; October 24, 1932 – May 18, 2007) was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991.
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David Hilbert David Hilbert (] ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of geometry. He also formulated the theory of Hilbert spaces, one of the foundations of functional analysis.
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Peter Higgs Peter Ware Higgs (born 29 May 1929) is a British theoretical physicist, emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Nobel Prize laureate for his work on the mass of subatomic particles.
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David Bohm David Joseph Bohm FRS (December 20, 1917 – October 27, 1992) was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind.
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Single-mode optical fiber In fiber-optic communication, a single-mode optical fiber (SMF) is an optical fiber designed to carry light only directly down the fiber - the transverse mode. Modes are the possible solutions of the Helmholtz equation for waves, which is obtained by combining Maxwell's equations and the boundary conditions. These modes define the way the wave travels through space, i.e. how the wave is distributed in space. Waves can have the same mode but have different frequencies. This is the case in single-mode fibers, where we can have waves with different frequencies, but of the same mode, which means that they are distributed in space in the same way, and that gives us a single ray of light. Although the ray travels parallel to the length of the fiber, it is often called transverse mode since its electromagnetic oscillations occur perpendicular (transverse) to the length of the fiber. The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Charles K. Kao for his theoretical work on the single-mode optical fiber.