Early Profiles in Optics: Charles E. Mendenhall

Charles Elwood Mendenhall was born in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., on August 1, 1872. He was the son of Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, a professor of physics at Ohio State University and the man for whom OSU’s Mendenhall Hall is named. The elder Mendenhall also lectured on geophysics and meteorology; he had been one of 30 American physicists to assemble at Johns Hopkins in October of 1884 to listen to the Baltimore lectures of Sir William Thomson (later called Lord Kelvin), who expounded on his beliefs in a luminiferous ether. Rayleigh was also present, as were Albert Michelson and Edward Morley.