Date: April 8, 1931
Location: New York, NY
(Original document available here)
One of the greatest men in the realm of pure science is Dr. Albert A. Michelson. Yet few of us could recall his accomplishments. If held a similar place in applied science be would be as well known as Edison. He is the world authority on light.
Graduating at the United States Naval Academy in 1873, where he taught for a short time before studying abroad, his investigations have continued through nearly half a century. His success brought him many prizes and medals, among which was the Nobel Prize for physics, awarded in 1907. For the past thirty-nine years he has been connected with the University of Chicago.
Now at the age of seventy-nine he is making new experiments to check his former estimate of the velocity of light. The labor involved has left him exhausted and ill, but still courageously directing the work through assistants. The greater the mind of a man the more it seeks for the exact truth. The kind of service such men give not only affects our daily lives through useful inventions, but by increasing the sum of human knowledge raises humanity to a higher plane.
Citation: Calvin Coolidge Says: Dispatches Written by Former-President Coolidge and Syndicated to Newspapers in 1930-1931 (Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation)
The Coolidge Foundation gratefully acknowledges the volunteer efforts of David McCann who prepared this document for digital publication.