Born in Strzeho (Poland) on December 19, 1852.  He left with his parents in 1855 and went on to New York.  Traveling Virginia City, Nevada, and San Francisco.  Michelson at the fetal age of 17 attended United State Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland where science was one of his best subjects.

In 1873 after graduating Michelson decide to get married and start a family.  His wife, Margaret, and his-self had three children before getting a divorce.  The children names were Beatice, Madeline, and Dorothy.  At the same time he felt pain about the divorce love of science took the place of the pain.

"It was Michelson's intention to use the interferometer to measure the Earth's velocity against the "ether" that was then thought to make up the basic substratum of the universe. If the Earth were traveling through the light-conducting ether, then the speed of the light traveling in the same direction would be expected to be equal to the velocity of light plus the velocity of the Earth, whereas the speed of light traveling at right angles to the Earth's path would be expected to travel only at the velocity of light." Isaac Asimov

Over the course of year Michelson has made a name for his self in the science world.  The she-devil machine is one of his creations that crucial analyzing light.  In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel prize for pioneering efforts in analyzing light.

Michelson made it possible for other scientists to discover their own inventions and follow in his footsteps of theory and knowledge.

Links
http://sim.jpl.nasa.gov/interferonmetery/albert.html
http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~zbzw/ph/sci/aam.html
http://www.nobel-winners.com/physics/albertmichevon.html
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/projects/centcats/fac/facch0701.html
http://museum.nist.gov