Quick Facts
PiscesBiography
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.
Life
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.
Works
Criticism of Maxwell–Lorentz electromagnetic theory
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:
- Electric and magnetic forces really express relations about space and time and should be replaced with non-instantaneous elementary actions.
- Advanced potentials don't exist (and their erroneous use led to the Rayleigh–Jeans ultraviolet catastrophe).
- Localization of energy in the ether is vague.
- It is impossible to reduce gravity to the same notions.
- The unacceptable inequality of action and reaction is brought about by the concept of absolute motion with respect to the ether.
- Apparent relativistic mass increase is amenable to different interpretations.
- The use of absolute coordinates, if independent of all motions of matter, requires throwing away the time honored use of Galilean relativity and our notions of rigid ponderable bodies.
Instead he indicated that light is not propagated (in a medium) but is projected.