Dutch physicist who shared with Hendrik A. Lorentz (Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon) the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1902 for his discovery of the Zeeman effect (q.v.).

Zeeman, who had been a student of Lorentz at the University of Leiden, began lecturing at Leiden in 1890. Six years later, at the suggestion of Lorentz, he investigated the effect of magnetic fields on a source of light and found that each of the lines in the spectrum of emitted light split into several lines; this became known as the Zeeman effect. Zeeman was appointed professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam in 1900 and director of its Physical Institute in 1908. Remaining there until his death, he conducted research on the propagation of light in moving media such as water, quartz, and flint.