Foregoers

(b. 7/1848 Budapest, d. 4/1919 Budapest)

Eötvös, after his primary and secondary education in Budapest, studied physics from Kirchhoff in Heidelberg and later came back to Budapest to complete his doctorate. Scientific literature and usage bears ample evidence of his inventions: the Eötvös Law of Capillarity; the Eötvös Unit of Gravitation (roughly one-billionth of a gram); the Eötvös Gravitational Torsion Balance of almost incredible sensitivity; the Eötvös Effect: and inventions of instruments for measuring terrestrial magnetism for decades to come. The torsion balance made it possible to explore for natural resources like oil, coal, and different ores. Eötvös also recognized the correlation between surface tension and molecular weights of liquids measured at various temperatures. This led to the Law of Eötvös, which was declared by Einstein to be one of the pillars of his theory of relativity and was applied in his “theory of equivalence.”