Abstract
DR. DU BOIS, whose death occurred at Utrecht on October 21, has left behind him a record of valuable work in magnetism, in optics, and in radiation. It was especially the connection between magnetic phenomena and the polarisation of light which led him into optical fields of research. Thus his earliest paper published in the Annalen der Physik und Cheniie in 1887 deals with magnetic circular polarisation in cobalt and nickel. In 1889 Dr. Du Bois made his first appearance at the British Association, which met that year in Newcastle, and gave an account of his experiments on the Kerr effect in magneto-optics, showing how it could be used in the measurement of strong magnetic fields. The complete paper was published in 1890 in the Ann. d. Phys. u. Chemie and in the Philosophical Magazine (vol. xxix., p. 253). This paper was noteworthy both for the novelty of the method used and for the admirable manner in which the method was worked out. The fundamental idea was to measure the magnetisation at the surface of magnetised spheroids of iron, nickel, and cobalt by its effect on polarised light reflected from small polished plane faces at various positions of the surface. The results obtained were at once a beautiful test of the theory of magnetic induction and an elucidation of the laws governing the Kerr phenomenon.
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K., C. Dr. H. E. J. Du Bois. Nature 102, 408–409 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/102408b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/102408b0