Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928), a professor of physics at the University of Leiden, sought to explain the origin of light by the oscillations of charged particles inside atoms. Under this assumption, a strong magnetic field would effect the wavelength. The observation of this effect by his pupil, Zeeman, won a Nobel prize for 1902 for the pair. However, the Lorentz theory could not explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Influenced by the proposal of Fitzgerald, Lorentz arrived at the formulas known as the Lorentz transformations to describe the relation of mass, length and time for a moving body. These equations form the basis for Einstein's special theory of relativity.