Walter Ritz
Encyclopedia
- d. 7 July 1909 in Göttingen
Göttingen
Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
) was a Swiss theoretical physicist
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
.
His father, Raphael Ritz, a native of Valais
Valais
The Valais is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps. The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley...
, was a well-known landscape and interior scenes artist. His mother was the daughter of the engineer Noerdlinger of Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
. Ritz studied in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
and Göttingen
Göttingen
Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
. He is most famous for his work with Johannes Rydberg
Johannes Rydberg
Johannes Robert Rydberg, , , was a Swedish physicist mainly known for devising the Rydberg formula, in 1888, which is used to predict the wavelengths of photons emitted by changes in the energy level of an electron in a hydrogen atom.The physical constant known as the...
on the Rydberg–Ritz combination principle. Ritz is also known for the variational method named after him, the Ritz method
Ritz method
The Ritz method is a direct method to find an approximate solution for boundary value problems. The method is named after Walter Ritz.In quantum mechanics, a system of particles can be described in terms of an "energy functional" or Hamiltonian, which will measure the energy of any proposed...
. Ritz died in 1909, at the age of 31. According to Forman's Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Ritz contracted tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in 1900, which led to his death in 1909. According to Ritz's collected works (Œuvres) the disease was pleurisy
Pleurisy
Pleurisy is an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs. Among other things, infections are the most common cause of pleurisy....
.
Criticism of Maxwell-Lorentz electromagnetic theory
Not so well known is the fact that in 1908 Walter 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 theoryLorentz ether theory
What is now often called Lorentz Ether theory has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "Theory of electrons", which was the final point in the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century....
) made it "essentially inappropriate to express the comprehensive laws for the propagation of electrodynamic actions."
Walter 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 (his emission theory).
- Advanced potentials don't exist (and their erroneous use led to the Rayleigh-Jeans ultraviolet catastropheUltraviolet catastropheThe ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, was a prediction of late 19th century/early 20th century classical physics that an ideal black body at thermal equilibrium will emit radiation with infinite power....
). - 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 a different interpretation.
- 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.