Luise Lange

Luise Lange (April 14, 1891 – 1978) was a German-American physicist. She is known for her work in molecular physics and the theory of relativity. She was the first to measure the electric dipole moment of a solution. She is also known for defending the solutions of the twin paradox in special relativity against philosophical refutations at the time.

Life Luise Lange was born in Braunschweig, Germany on April 14, 1891. She studied in Braunschweig University of Technology and later at the University of Göttingen. She was also present during Albert Einstein's 1915 talk at Göttingen. led to her doctorate degree from the University of Göttingen in 1923. The work was published in later 1925.

Special relativity In 1905, in his annus mirabilis paper Einstein discussed the discrepancy in clocks when moving relatively to each other and extended its implications to living organisms in 1911. The same year, Paul Langevin extended the discussion to the age of two bodies of matter. Hermann Weyl was the first to refer to two twin brothers in 1918, leading to the concept of the twin paradox. and "On a Misconception of the Relativity of Time" in defense of Einstein. Contrary to some authors, Lange defended that the twin paradox did not invalidate relativity.

In her first paper, which later became known as the three-brother experiment, writing:

p. 25: We consider it first in the form of the traveler who "changes trains", but to deal with motions free throughout from accelerations we avoid the jump from one system to the other; instead, we leave Paul attached to his first system and place another observer, James, on the one moving oppositely, who sets his clock in accordance with Paul's when he passes him, on t"=t'=1. Now we have to distinguish three different uniform systems, S, S', S". The systems S' and S" move relatively to S with velocities ±v [...] The conclusion now that time in the double-system S'-S" flows twice as slow as in S was based on the consideration that, as both move with the same numerical velocity relatively to S, the time elapsing in either of them in going from A to B and back from B to A is the same.

She then showed that also in the ordinary twin paradox, no contradiction arises if the relativity of simultaneity derived from the Lorentz transformation between events is carefully considered. Subsequently she discussed the solution of Max von Laue and others in terms of proper time in Minkowski space, discussed Einstein's solution in terms of general relativity, and criticized all descriptions that were based on acceleration. In her second paper, Her system is summarized in the following table: