Maurice Allais
Maurice Allais | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 31, 1911 Paris, France |
| Died | October 9, 2010 Saint-Cloud, France |
| Residence | Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Allais Effect, Dayton Miller, Special Relativity |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physicist, Economist |
Maurice Félix Charles Allais (31 May 1911 – 9 October 2010) was a French economist and physicist. He was the 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources." Although he is best known for his work in economics, Allais also carried out extensive experimental and theoretical work in physics, and is remembered for the Allais Effect, an anomalous behaviour of a pendulum reported during solar eclipses.
Biography
Maurice Allais was born on 31 May 1911 in Paris, France, into a modest family; his father was a shopkeeper and his grandfather a carpenter. His father, taken prisoner during the First World War, died in Germany in 1915, an event that affected Allais deeply. Despite his young age, he resolved to honour his father's name.
Allais studied at the Lycée Lakanal and then entered the École Polytechnique in Paris, from which he graduated at the top of his class. He continued his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, and later obtained a doctorate in engineering from the University of Paris (Faculty of Science) in 1949. From 1944 he served as Professor of Economics at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, and in 1946 he became director of its Economic Analysis Centre. He also held teaching positions at other institutions, including the University of Paris X–Nanterre.
Allais died on 9 October 2010 in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, at the age of 99.
Scientific contributions
Economics
Allais made pioneering contributions to mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory, capital theory, decision theory and monetary policy. He independently developed an early version of the overlapping generations model (1947) and formulated a version of the "golden rule" of optimal economic growth before it became widely known. He is also remembered for the "Allais paradox" (1953), an experimental result that challenged the expected utility hypothesis and anticipated later developments in behavioural economics. For this body of work he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1988.
Physics
Late in life Allais became interested in the work of Dayton Miller, and produced a series of papers on the subject. Much of his scientific work relates to gravitation, the velocity of light and the anisotropy of space.
Between 1952 and 1960 Allais carried out his own experiments, most notably with a paraconical pendulum, which led him to report phenomena he considered incompatible with commonly accepted theories. During the solar eclipses of 1954 and 1959 he observed an anomalous angular deviation in the plane of oscillation of the pendulum, an observation that has since become known as the Allais Effect. He also reported irregularities with sidereal periodicity (about 23 hours 56 minutes) and lunisolar periodicity. From these results he drew the conclusion that the velocity of light is not strictly constant but varies slightly with direction, which he interpreted as evidence for an "aether" and for the anisotropy of space.
To consolidate his own findings, Allais re-examined in detail the earlier experiments carried out in the United States by Michelson and Morley in 1887, by Morley and Miller in 1902, 1904 and 1905, and by Miller in 1925, 1926 and 1930. He argued that these results contained anomalies that had not been noticed or had been neglected at the time, and maintained that these anomalies were real and called into question the theory of relativity associated with Lorentz, Poincaré and Einstein.
Attempts by other researchers to reproduce the Allais effect during subsequent eclipses have produced mixed and inconsistent results, and the effect and Allais's related conclusions about the anisotropy of space are not accepted by mainstream physics, which regards the reported anomalies as unconfirmed or attributable to environmental and instrumental factors.
Honors
- 1959 – Galabert Prize of the French Astronautical Society (for his work in physics).
- 1978 – Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the first time this distinction, France's highest scientific award, was given to an economist.
- 1988 – Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
Abstracts
Papers by Maurice Allais:
- "On My Experiments in Physics, 1952-1960", 21st Century Science & Technology (Spr 1998).
- "Should the Laws of Gravitation be Reconsidered?", 21st Century Science & Technology (Fall 1998) p. 21 with complementary note.
- "The Experiments of Dayton C. Miller (1925-1926) and the Theory of Relativity", 21st Century Science & Technology (Spr 1998) p. 26.
- "Very significant regularities in the interferometric observations of Dayton C. Miller 1925-1926", Note dated January 23th, 1997 to the French Academy of Sciences.
- "New very significant regularities in the interferometric observations of Dayton C. Miller 1925-1926", Note dated April 26th, 1999 to the French Academy of Sciences.
- "The Origin of the Very Significant Regularities Displayed in the Interferometric Observations of Dayton C. Miller 1925-1926: Temperature Effects or Space Anisotropy?", Note dated December 2000 to the French Academy of Sciences. In this paper, Maurice Allais refutes all the criticisms opened about the Miller's works, from Shankland (1955) up to now.
- "About the Aether Concept", Research dated July 24th 2003.
- "The Clear and Extraordinary Regularities in Dayton C. Miller's Interferometric Observations of 1925-1926: The Fundamental and Complete Collapse of Relativity Theory", Translation of Professor Allais's article published in "La Jaune et la Rouge", the review of the French polytechnical school (Ecole Polytechnique), (Oct 2003).
Papers by Others (related to Maurice Allais):
- Albert Einstein's opinion about the interferometric experiments of Dayton C. Miller. A communication to "Science". New Series, Vol 62, N? 1596 du 31 juillet 1925.
- Jean-Pierre Bouyssonnie & Henry Aujard, "About Unforeseen Repercussions of the Eclipse of August 11th, 1999 in the Field of Gravitation". Translation of an article published in the review of C.N.I.S.F. (National Council of the Engineers and Scientists of France), Feb 20, 2000.
- Laurence Hecht, "Letters to Editor and Reply: Rethinking the Laws of Gravitation", 21st Century Science & Technology (Fall 1998).
- Henry Aujard, "The 'Allais Effect' Is Real!", 21st Century Science & Technology, V14, N2, p. 70 (Sum 2001).
- R?mi Saumont, "Undermining the Foundations of Relativity, the Work: L'Anisotropie de l'Espace (The Anisotropy of Space)", published in french by Maurice Allais in 1997 with Editions Cl?ment Juglar, 62 Avenue de Suffren, 75015 PARIS, 21st Century Science & Technology (Sum 1998).
- Laurence Hetch, "Optical Theory in the 19th Century, and the Truth about Michelson-Morley-Miller", 21st Century Science & Technology (Spr 1998) p. 35.
- Richard Moody, Jr., "Albert Einstein, Plagiarist of the Century", Nexus Magazine, V11, N1 (Dec-Jan 2004).
Books
- 2005 - "Albert Einstein un Extraordinaire Paradoxe: Contributions de Maurice Allais ? la physique exp?rimentale et th?orique" (Read in full)
External links
- Maurice Allais at Wikipedia
- Maurice Allais at NobelPrize.org