Lorentz force
Fuerza de Lorentz
- Date
- 1895 · confidence medium
- Place
- Leiden, Netherlands
- Credited to
- Hendrik Lorentz (full form, 1895); Oliver Heaviside (earlier vector form, 1889)
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Lorentz, professor of theoretical physics at Leiden, derives the complete expression for the force on an electric charge in electric and magnetic fields (F = qE + qv×B), joining electromagnetism and particle mechanics.
Disputed priority: Oliver Heaviside had already written the magnetic part in modern vector notation in 1889, correcting J. J. Thomson's derivation (1881); Lorentz added the electric term and gave the definitive form in 1895.
What it led to
- Complete formulation of classical electromagnetism alongside Maxwell's equations
- Calculation of charged-particle trajectories in fields
- Lorentz's electron theory of matter