What is recorded here?
Magnetizing an iron mirror changes the polarization of light reflected from it. Kerr compared light extinction and the effects of reversing magnetization, changing incidence and rotating the polarizing apparatus. His 1877 and 1878 papers established a family of reflection effects, including changes that cannot be described simply as rotation of a still-linear polarization.
Source-linked catalogue note. A detailed explanatory guide has not yet been prepared for this entry.
Scientific scope
The target is the finite experimental magneto-optical reflection contribution, not every magnetic material or the separate 1875 electro-optic Kerr effect. Geometry, surface condition and polarization orientation matter. The first paper rejects an initial explanation that rotation occurs before incidence; a later microscopic theory is not supplied by that discarded model. The source is an explicitly abridged 1900 reprint of the two originals. Faraday is an acknowledged precursor, not a coauthor. The experimenter John Kerr is distinct from relativist Roy Kerr.
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People and systems
John Kerr
Source-listed authors for the exact contribution; experimental subjects are not autonomous scientific authors. Source support and predecessor work retain separate roles. Individual effort shares and unresolved identities are not inferred.
Research locations and affiliations
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Documented countries / regions: United Kingdom
Printed John Kerr byline at Free Church Training College, Glasgow; this is the magneto-optical experimenter, not Roy Kerr. No nationality, ownership or effort share inferred.
English catalogue narrative
Kerr: magnetization-dependent polarization in reflected light
Magnetizing an iron mirror changes the polarization of light reflected from it. Kerr compared light extinction and the effects of reversing magnetization, changing incidence and rotating the polarizing apparatus. His 1877 and 1878 papers established a family of reflection effects, including changes that cannot be described simply as rotation of a still-linear polarization.
Scientific scope
The target is the finite experimental magneto-optical reflection contribution, not every magnetic material or the separate 1875 electro-optic Kerr effect. Geometry, surface condition and polarization orientation matter. The first paper rejects an initial explanation that rotation occurs before incidence; a later microscopic theory is not supplied by that discarded model. The source is an explicitly abridged 1900 reprint of the two originals. Faraday is an acknowledged precursor, not a coauthor. The experimenter John Kerr is distinct from relativist Roy Kerr.
Reading status
This is a source-linked WRS catalogue note. A full explanatory guide and independent scientific reconstruction have not been completed for this entry. Read the identified original work for its complete narrative and arguments.
People and systems
John Kerr
Source-listed authors for the exact contribution; experimental subjects are not autonomous scientific authors. Source support and predecessor work retain separate roles. Individual effort shares and unresolved identities are not inferred.