Hendrik Lorentz. Portrait of Hendrik Anton Lorentz (1853-1928), Dutch theoretical physicist. Lorentz graduated early from Arnhem and Leyden, being awarded the Chair of Theoretical Physics at Leyden at the age of 24. His thesis and early work centred on the concept of the electron, a term he coined in 1899, showing how vibrating electrons give rise to electromagnetic waves. He worked with Zeeman on the splitting of spectral lines with a magnetic field (Zeeman effect), work for which they shared the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physics. Lorentz showed that moving objects cont- ract in the direction of motion, a finding later confirmed by Einstein's special relativity theory.