Identified by James Bradley in 1728, stellar aberration was widely taken as confirmation of the corpuscular theory.
Newton, 1730, Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light, 4th Ed.
(London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012.
Elton, 2009, "A Light to Lighten our Darkness: Lighthouse Optics and the Later Development of Fresnel's Revolutionary Refracting Lens 1780–1900", International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, vol. 79, no. 2 (July 2009), pp. 183–244; . E.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel ( or ; ; 10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century.
Boutry, 1948, "Augustin Fresnel: His time, life and work, 1788–1827", Science Progress, vol. 36, no. 144 (October 1948), pp. 587–604; jstor.org/stable/43413515. J.Z.
The family moved twice – in 1789/90 to Cherbourg, and in 1794 to Jacques's home town of Mathieu, where Madame Fresnel would spend 25 years as a widow, outliving two of her sons. The first son, Louis (1786–1809), was admitted to the École Polytechnique, became a lieutenant in the artillery, and was killed in action at Jaca, Spain, the day before his 23rd birthday.
That distinction apparently belongs to the London glass-cutter Thomas Rogers, whose first lenses, 53cm in diameter and 14cm thick at the center, were installed at the Old Lower Lighthouse at Portland Bill in 1789.
Levitt, 2009, The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848, Oxford, . T.H.
In 1790, following the Revolution, Broglie became part of the département of Eure.
In 1790, the Marquis de Condorcet suggested that it would be easier to make the annular sections separately and assemble them on a frame; but even that was impractical at the time.
The family moved twice – in 1789/90 to Cherbourg, and in 1794 to Jacques's home town of Mathieu, where Madame Fresnel would spend 25 years as a widow, outliving two of her sons. The first son, Louis (1786–1809), was admitted to the École Polytechnique, became a lieutenant in the artillery, and was killed in action at Jaca, Spain, the day before his 23rd birthday.
(The Institut de France had taken over the functions of the French Académie des Sciences and other académies in 1795.
Grattan-Guinness, 1990, Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840, Basel: Birkhäuser, vol. 2, , chapter 13 (pp. 852–915, "The entry of Fresnel: Physical optics, 1815–1824") and chapter 15 (pp. 968–1045, "The entry of Navier and the triumph of Cauchy: Elasticity theory, 1819–1830"). C.
At the age of nine or ten he was undistinguished except for his ability to turn tree-branches into toy bows and guns that worked far too well, earning himself the title l'homme de génie (the man of genius) from his accomplices, and a united crackdown from their elders. In 1801, Augustin was sent to the École Centrale at Caen, as company for Louis.
It was not until 1801 that Thomas Young, in the Bakerian Lecture for that year, cited Newton's hint, and accounted for the colors of a thin plate as the combined effect of the front and back reflections, which reinforce or cancel each other according to the wavelength and the thickness.
Two such modifications were proposed by Young in the same 1801 Bakerian Lecture: first, that the secondary waves near the edge of an obstacle could diverge into the shadow, but only weakly, due to limited reinforcement from other secondary waves; and second, that diffraction by an edge was caused by interference between two rays: one reflected off the edge, and the other inflected while passing near the edge.
Later, in the 1803 Bakerian Lecture, Young ceased to regard inflection as a separate phenomenon, and produced evidence that diffraction fringes inside the shadow of a narrow obstacle were due to interference: when the light from one side was blocked, the internal fringes disappeared.
But Augustin lifted his performance: in late 1804 he was accepted into the École Polytechnique, being placed 17th in the entrance examination.
Further samples were installed in about half a dozen other locations by 1804.
Graduating in 1806, he then enrolled at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (National School of Bridges and Roads, also known as "ENPC" or "École des Ponts"), from which he graduated in 1809, entering the service of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées as an ingénieur ordinaire aspirant (ordinary engineer in training).
Young, 1807, A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (2 volumes), London: J.Johnson; vol. 1, vol. 2. T.
As the detailed records of the École Polytechnique begin in 1808, we know little of Augustin's time there, except that he made few if any friends and – in spite of continuing poor health – excelled in drawing and geometry: in his first year he took a prize for his solution to a geometry problem posed by Adrien-Marie Legendre.
Newton offered an alternative "Rule" for the extraordinary refraction, which rode on his authority through the 18th century, although he made "no known attempt to deduce it from any principles of optics, corpuscular or otherwise." In 1808 the extraordinary refraction of calcite was investigated experimentally, with unprecedented accuracy, by Étienne-Louis Malus, and found to be consistent with Huygens's spheroid construction, not Newton's "Rule".
Frankel, 1974, "The search for a corpuscular theory of double refraction: Malus, Laplace and the competition of 1808", Centaurus, vol. 18, no. 3 (September 1974), pp. 223–245. E.
Graduating in 1806, he then enrolled at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (National School of Bridges and Roads, also known as "ENPC" or "École des Ponts"), from which he graduated in 1809, entering the service of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées as an ingénieur ordinaire aspirant (ordinary engineer in training).
The editors of his collected works were also unable to find it, and admitted that it was probably lost. == Unfinished business == === Aether drag and aether density === In 1810, Arago found experimentally that the degree of refraction of starlight does not depend on the direction of the earth's motion relative to the line of sight.
There, in 1811, he anticipated what became known as the Solvay process for producing soda ash, except that recycling of the ammonia was not considered.
Brewster, however, proposed a system similar to Condorcet's in 1811, and by 1820 was advocating its use in British lighthouses. Meanwhile, on 21 June 1819, Fresnel was "temporarily" seconded by the Commission des Phares (Commission of Lighthouses) on the recommendation of Arago (a member of the Commission since 1813), to review possible improvements in lighthouse illumination.
The commission had been established by Napoleon in 1811 and placed under the Corps des Ponts – Fresnel's employer. By the end of August 1819, unaware of the Buffon-Condorcet-Brewster proposal, Fresnel made his first presentation to the commission, recommending what he called lentilles à échelons (lenses by steps) to replace the reflectors then in use, which reflected only about half of the incident light.
That difference may explain why leading chemists, who learned of his discovery through his uncle Léonor, eventually thought it uneconomic. About 1812, Fresnel was sent to Nyons, in the southern département of Drôme, to assist with the imperial highway that was to connect Spain and Italy.
Arago tried to explain his observations in corpuscular terms. In 1812, as Arago pursued further qualitative experiments and other commitments, Jean-Baptiste Biot reworked the same ground using a gypsum lamina in place of the mica, and found empirical formulae for the intensities of the ordinary and extraordinary images.
If we substitute :U=\cos^2\tfrac{\phi}{2} and A=\sin^2\tfrac{\phi}{2}\,, then Fresnel's formulae can be rewritten as : \!I_o = U\cos^2 s + A\cos^2(2i-s)\,, : I_e = U\sin^2 s + A\sin^2(2i-s)\,, which are none other than Biot's empirical formulae of 1812, except that Biot interpreted U and A as the "unaffected" and "affected" selections of the rays incident on the lamina.
The two classes of minerals naturally become known as uniaxal and biaxal—or, in later literature, uniaxial and biaxial. In 1813, Brewster observed the simple concentric pattern in "beryl, emerald, ruby &c." The same pattern was later observed in calcite by Wollaston, Biot, and Seebeck. Biot, assuming that the concentric pattern was the general case, tried to calculate the colors with his theory of chromatic polarization, and succeeded better for some minerals than for others.
Brewster, however, proposed a system similar to Condorcet's in 1811, and by 1820 was advocating its use in British lighthouses. Meanwhile, on 21 June 1819, Fresnel was "temporarily" seconded by the Commission des Phares (Commission of Lighthouses) on the recommendation of Arago (a member of the Commission since 1813), to review possible improvements in lighthouse illumination.
He became the Permanent Secretary of the École des Beaux-Arts and (until 1814) a professor at the École Polytechnique, and was the initial point of contact between Augustin and the leading optical physicists of the day . === Education === The Fresnel brothers were initially home-schooled by their mother.
On 15 May 1814, while work was slack due to Napoleon's defeat, Fresnel wrote a "P.S." to his brother Léonor, saying in part: As late as 28 December he was still waiting for information, but he had received Biot's memoir by 10 February 1815.
But Young was then the only public defender of the wave theory. In summary, in the spring of 1814, as Fresnel tried in vain to guess what polarization was, the corpuscularists thought that they knew, while the wave-theorists (if we may use the plural) literally had no idea.
Such were the circumstances in which Arago first heard of Fresnel's interest in optics. === Rêveries === Fresnel's letters from later in 1814 reveal his interest in the wave theory, including his awareness that it explained the constancy of the speed of light and was at least compatible with stellar aberration.
The two notes, together with Ampère's acknowledgment, were eventually published in 1885. == Lost works == Fresnel's essay Rêveries of 1814 has not survived.
On 15 May 1814, while work was slack due to Napoleon's defeat, Fresnel wrote a "P.S." to his brother Léonor, saying in part: As late as 28 December he was still waiting for information, but he had received Biot's memoir by 10 February 1815.
In 1816 the Académie des Sciences regained its name and autonomy, but remained part of the institute.) In March 1815, perceiving Napoleon's return from Elba as "an attack on civilization", Fresnel departed without leave, hastened to Toulouse and offered his services to the royalist resistance, but soon found himself on the sick list.
It was Malus who coined the term polarization to describe this behavior, although the polarizing angle became known as Brewster's angle after its dependence on the refractive index was determined experimentally by David Brewster in 1815.
But on 19 December, Mérimée dined with Ampère and Arago, with whom he was acquainted through the École Polytechnique; and Arago promised to look at Fresnel's essay. In mid 1815, on his way home to Mathieu to serve his suspension, Fresnel met Arago in Paris and spoke of the wave theory and stellar aberration.
He was informed that he was trying to break down open doors ("il enfonçait des portes ouvertes"), and directed to classical works on optics. === Diffraction === ==== First attempt (1815) ==== On 12 July 1815, as Fresnel was about to leave Paris, Arago left him a note on a new topic: Fresnel would not have ready access to these works outside Paris, and could not read English.
But it was enough to enable the wave theory to do what selectionist theory could not: generate testable formulae covering a comprehensive range of optical phenomena, from mechanical assumptions. ==== Photoelasticity, multiple-prism experiments (1822) ==== In 1815, Brewster reported that colors appear when a slice of isotropic material, placed between crossed polarizers, is mechanically stressed.
Fresnel, 1815a, Letter to Jean François "Léonor" Mérimée, 10 February 1815 (Smithsonian Dibner Library, MSS 546A), printed in G. Magalhães, "Remarks on a new autograph letter from Augustin Fresnel: Light aberration and wave theory", Science in Context, vol. 19, no.2 (June 2006), pp. 295–307, , at p.306 (original French) and p.307 (English translation). A.
Grattan-Guinness, 1990, Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840, Basel: Birkhäuser, vol. 2, , chapter 13 (pp. 852–915, "The entry of Fresnel: Physical optics, 1815–1824") and chapter 15 (pp. 968–1045, "The entry of Navier and the triumph of Cauchy: Elasticity theory, 1819–1830"). C.
He arrived in March 1816, and his leave was subsequently extended through the middle of the year. Meanwhile, in an experiment reported on 26 February 1816, Arago verified Fresnel's prediction that the internal fringes were shifted if the rays on one side of the obstacle passed through a thin glass lamina.
Arago later used a similar argument to explain the colors in the scintillation of stars. Fresnel's updated memoir was eventually published in the March 1816 issue of Annales de Chimie et de Physique, of which Arago had recently become co-editor.
But the new link was not rigorous, and Pouillet himself would become a distinguished early adopter of the wave theory. ==== "Efficacious ray", double-mirror experiment (1816) ==== On 24 May 1816, Fresnel wrote to Young (in French), acknowledging how little of his own memoir was new.
According to Arago, Fresnel's letters from December 1816 reveal his consequent anxiety.
These experiments, among others, were eventually reported in a brief memoir published in 1819 and later translated into English. In a memoir drafted on 30 August 1816 and revised on 6 October, Fresnel reported an experiment in which he placed two matching thin laminae in a double-slit apparatus – one over each slit, with their optic axes perpendicular – and obtained two interference patterns offset in opposite directions, with perpendicular polarizations.
As early as September 1816, according to his later account, he realized that the non-interference of orthogonally-polarized beams, together with the phase-inversion rule in chromatic polarization, would be most easily explained if the waves were purely transverse, and Ampère "had the same thought" on the phase-inversion rule.
The introduction of transverse waves into the main argument was delayed to the second installment, in which he revealed the suspicion that he and Ampère had harbored since 1816, and the difficulty it raised.
Most of Fresnel's writings on polarized light before 1821 – including his first theory of chromatic polarization (submitted 7 October 1816) and the crucial "supplement" of January 1818 — were not published in full until his Oeuvres complètes ("complete works") began to appear in 1866.
The "supplement" of July 1816, proposing the "efficacious ray" and reporting the famous double-mirror experiment, met the same fate, as did the "first memoir" on double refraction. Publication of Fresnel's collected works was itself delayed by the deaths of successive editors.
Fresnel, 1816, "Mémoire sur la diffraction de la lumière" ("Memoir on the diffraction of light"), Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 1, pp. 239–81 (March 1816); reprinted as "Deuxième Mémoire…" ("Second Memoir…") in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 89–122. Not to be confused with the later "prize memoir" (Fresnel, 1818b). A.
To Arago he complained of being "tormented by the worries of surveillance, and the need to reprimand…" And to Mérimée he wrote: "I find nothing more tiresome than having to manage other men, and I admit that I have no idea what I'm doing." ==== Prize memoir (1818) and sequel ==== On 17 March 1817, the Académie des Sciences announced that diffraction would be the topic for the biannual physics Grand Prix to be awarded in 1819.
Although the wording of the problem referred to rays and inflection and did not invite wave-based solutions, Arago and Ampère encouraged Fresnel to enter. In the fall of 1817, Fresnel, supported by de Prony, obtained a leave of absence from the new head of the Corp des Ponts, Louis Becquey, and returned to Paris.
The conceptual gap between the wave theory and selectionism had widened again. ==== Total internal reflection (1817–23) ==== By 1817 it had been discovered by Brewster, but not adequately reported, that plane-polarized light was partly depolarized by total internal reflection if initially polarized at an acute angle to the plane of incidence.
These findings were contained in a memoir submitted to the Académie on 10 November 1817 and read a fortnight later.
As early as May 1817, at Arago's suggestion, Fresnel applied for membership of the Académie des Sciences, but received only one vote.
The deadline for entries was set at 1 August 1818 to allow time for replication of experiments.
He resumed his engineering duties in the spring of 1818; but from then on he was based in Paris, first on the Canal de l'Ourcq, and then (from May 1819) with the cadastre of the pavements. On 15 January 1818, in a different context (revisited below), Fresnel showed that the addition of sinusoidal functions of the same frequency but different phases is analogous to the addition of forces with different directions.
The explanation was algebraic rather than geometric. Knowledge of this method was assumed in a preliminary note on diffraction, dated 19 April 1818 and deposited on 20 April, in which Fresnel outlined the elementary theory of diffraction as found in modern textbooks.
Moreover, Fresnel could deal only with special cases, because he had not yet solved the problem of superposing sinusoidal functions with arbitrary phase differences due to propagation at different velocities through the lamina. He solved that problem in a "supplement" signed on 15 January 1818 (mentioned above).
Young repeated this idea in an article published in a supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica in February 1818, in which he added that Malus's law would be explained if polarization consisted in a transverse motion. Thus Fresnel, by his own testimony, may not have been the first person to suspect that light waves could have a transverse component, or that polarized waves were exclusively transverse.
But these incomplete theories had not reconciled the nature of polarization with the apparent existence of unpolarized light; that achievement was to be Fresnel's alone. In a note that Buchwald dates in the summer of 1818, Fresnel entertained the idea that unpolarized waves could have vibrations of the same energy and obliquity, with their orientations distributed uniformly about the wave-normal, and that the degree of polarization was the degree of non-uniformity in the distribution.
An undated marginal note indicates that the two coupled prisms were later replaced by a single "parallelepiped in glass"—now known as a Fresnel rhomb. This was the memoir whose "supplement", dated January 1818, contained the method of superposing sinusoidal functions and the restatement of Malus's law in terms of amplitudes.
The memoir introducing the parallelepiped form of the Fresnel rhomb, read in March 1818, was mislaid until 1846, and then attracted such interest that it was soon republished in English.
Most of Fresnel's writings on polarized light before 1821 – including his first theory of chromatic polarization (submitted 7 October 1816) and the crucial "supplement" of January 1818 — were not published in full until his Oeuvres complètes ("complete works") began to appear in 1866.
Fresnel, 1816, "Mémoire sur la diffraction de la lumière" ("Memoir on the diffraction of light"), Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 1, pp. 239–81 (March 1816); reprinted as "Deuxième Mémoire…" ("Second Memoir…") in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 89–122. Not to be confused with the later "prize memoir" (Fresnel, 1818b). A.
Fresnel, 1818a, "Mémoire sur les couleurs développées dans les fluides homogènes par la lumière polarisée", read 30 March 1818 (according to Kipnis, 1991, p. 217), published 1846; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 655–83; translated by E. Ronalds & H. Lloyd as "Memoir upon the colours produced in homogeneous fluids by polarized light", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 44–65.
Yet in his last days he needed "strength of soul," not against death alone, but against "the interruption of discoveries… of which he hoped to derive useful applications." Jansenism is considered [by the Roman Catholic Church , and may be part of the explanation why Fresnel, in spite of his scientific achievements and his royalist credentials, never gained a permanent academic teaching post; his only teaching appointment was at the Athénée in the winter of 1819–20.
To Arago he complained of being "tormented by the worries of surveillance, and the need to reprimand…" And to Mérimée he wrote: "I find nothing more tiresome than having to manage other men, and I admit that I have no idea what I'm doing." ==== Prize memoir (1818) and sequel ==== On 17 March 1817, the Académie des Sciences announced that diffraction would be the topic for the biannual physics Grand Prix to be awarded in 1819.
He resumed his engineering duties in the spring of 1818; but from then on he was based in Paris, first on the Canal de l'Ourcq, and then (from May 1819) with the cadastre of the pavements. On 15 January 1818, in a different context (revisited below), Fresnel showed that the addition of sinusoidal functions of the same frequency but different phases is analogous to the addition of forces with different directions.
These experiments, among others, were eventually reported in a brief memoir published in 1819 and later translated into English. In a memoir drafted on 30 August 1816 and revised on 6 October, Fresnel reported an experiment in which he placed two matching thin laminae in a double-slit apparatus – one over each slit, with their optic axes perpendicular – and obtained two interference patterns offset in opposite directions, with perpendicular polarizations.
Hence, for the sphere (the ordinary wave), the vibration was along the lines of latitude (continuing the geographic analogy); and for the spheroid (the extraordinary wave), the vibration was along the lines of longitude. On 29 March 1819, Biot presented a memoir in which he proposed simple generalizations of Malus's rules for a crystal with two axes, and reported that both generalizations seemed to be confirmed by experiment.
Brewster, however, proposed a system similar to Condorcet's in 1811, and by 1820 was advocating its use in British lighthouses. Meanwhile, on 21 June 1819, Fresnel was "temporarily" seconded by the Commission des Phares (Commission of Lighthouses) on the recommendation of Arago (a member of the Commission since 1813), to review possible improvements in lighthouse illumination.
The commission had been established by Napoleon in 1811 and placed under the Corps des Ponts – Fresnel's employer. By the end of August 1819, unaware of the Buffon-Condorcet-Brewster proposal, Fresnel made his first presentation to the commission, recommending what he called lentilles à échelons (lenses by steps) to replace the reflectors then in use, which reflected only about half of the incident light.
Still finer steps can be found in low-cost plastic "sheet" magnifiers. == Honors == Fresnel was elected to the Société Philomathique de Paris in April 1819, and in 1822 became one of the editors of the Société's Bulletin des Sciences.
Fresnel, 1819, "Mémoire sur l'action que les rayons de lumière polarisée exercent les uns sur les autres", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 10, pp. 288–305, March 1819; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 509–22; translated as "On the action of rays of polarized light upon each other", in Crew, 1900, pp. 145–55. G.-A.
Grattan-Guinness, 1990, Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840, Basel: Birkhäuser, vol. 2, , chapter 13 (pp. 852–915, "The entry of Fresnel: Physical optics, 1815–1824") and chapter 15 (pp. 968–1045, "The entry of Navier and the triumph of Cauchy: Elasticity theory, 1819–1830"). C.
The wave theory was adopted by Fraunhofer in the early 1820s and by Franz Ernst Neumann in the 1830s, and then began to find favor in German textbooks. The economy of assumptions under the wave theory was emphasized by William Whewell in his History of the Inductive Sciences, first published in 1837.
Brewster, however, proposed a system similar to Condorcet's in 1811, and by 1820 was advocating its use in British lighthouses. Meanwhile, on 21 June 1819, Fresnel was "temporarily" seconded by the Commission des Phares (Commission of Lighthouses) on the recommendation of Arago (a member of the Commission since 1813), to review possible improvements in lighthouse illumination.
Finished in March 1820, it had a square lens panel 55cm on a side, containing 97 polygonal (not annular) prisms – and so impressed the Commission that Fresnel was asked for a full eight-panel version.
In response to Ørsted's discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, Ampère initially supposed that the field of a permanent magnet was due to a macroscopic circulating current.
If Biot's substitutions were accurate, they would imply that his experimental results were more fully explained by Fresnel's theory than by his own. Arago delayed reporting on Fresnel's works on chromatic polarization until June 1821, when he used them in a broad attack on Biot's theory.
But he first published the idea in a paper on "Calcul des teintes…" ("calculation of the tints…"), serialized in Arago's Annales for May, June, and July 1821.
If that assumption was to be widely entertained, its explanatory power would need to be impressive. ==== Partial reflection (1821) ==== In the second installment of "Calcul des teintes" (June 1821), Fresnel supposed, by analogy with sound waves, that the density of the aether in a refractive medium was inversely proportional to the square of the wave velocity, and therefore directly proportional to the square of the refractive index.
The predicted reflectivity was non-zero at all angles. The third installment (July 1821) was a short "postscript" in which Fresnel announced that he had found, by a "mechanical solution", a formula for the reflectivity of the p component, which predicted that the reflectivity was zero at the Brewster angle.
But, in a memoir submitted on 19 November 1821, Fresnel reported two experiments on topaz showing that neither refraction was ordinary in the sense of satisfying Snell's law; that is, neither ray was the product of spherical secondary waves. The same memoir contained Fresnel's first attempt at the biaxial velocity law.
The resulting 137-page essay, titled De la Lumière (On Light), was apparently finished in June 1821 and published by February 1822.
In a public spectacle on the evening of 13 April 1821, it was demonstrated by comparison with the most recent reflectors, which it suddenly rendered obsolete. Fresnel's next lens was a rotating apparatus with eight "bull's-eye" panels, made in annular arcs by Saint-Gobain, giving eight rotating beams – to be seen by mariners as a periodic flash.
He was also an examiner (not a teacher) at the École Polytechnique since 1821; but poor health, long hours during the examination season, and anxiety about judging others induced him to resign that post in late 1824, to save his energy for his lighthouse work. In the same year he designed the first fixed lens – for spreading light evenly around the horizon while minimizing waste above or below.
Most of Fresnel's writings on polarized light before 1821 – including his first theory of chromatic polarization (submitted 7 October 1816) and the crucial "supplement" of January 1818 — were not published in full until his Oeuvres complètes ("complete works") began to appear in 1866.
In his second note, dated 5 July 1821, he further argued that a macroscopic current had the counterfactual implication that a permanent magnet should be hot, whereas microscopic currents circulating around the molecules might avoid the heating mechanism.
This work seems to have been similar in scope to the essay De la Lumière of 1821/22, except that Fresnel's views on double refraction, circular and elliptical polarization, optical rotation, and total internal reflection had developed since then.
Fresnel, 1821a, "Note sur le calcul des teintes que la polarisation développe dans les lames cristallisées" et seq., Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 102–11 (May 1821), 167–96 (June 1821), 312–15 ("Postscript", July 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 609–48; translated as "On the calculation of the tints that polarization develops in crystalline plates, & postscript", / , 2021. A.
Fresnel, 1821b, "Note sur les remarques de M. Biot...", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 393–403 (August 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 601–608; translated as "Note on the remarks of Mr. Biot relating to colors of thin plates", / , 2021. A.
Fresnel, 1821c, Letter to D.F.J.Arago, 21 September 1821, in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 257–9; translated as "Letter to Arago on biaxial birefringence", Wikisource, April 2021. A.
In a further memoir read on 30 March, Fresnel reported that if polarized light was fully "depolarized" by a Fresnel rhomb – now described as a parallelepiped – its properties were not further modified by a subsequent passage through an optically rotating medium or device. The connection between optical rotation and birefringence was further explained in 1822, in the memoir on elliptical and circular polarization.
His first attempt at a mechanical derivation, contained in a "supplement" dated 13 January 1822, assumed that (i) there were three mutually perpendicular directions in which a displacement produced a reaction in the same direction, (ii) the reaction was otherwise a linear function of the displacement, and (iii) the radius of the surface in any direction was the square root of the component, in that direction, of the reaction to a unit displacement in that direction.
Having confirmed the three perpendicular axes on which a displacement produced a parallel reaction, and thence constructed the surface of elasticity, he showed that Biot's dihedral law is exact provided that the binormals are taken as the optic axes, and the wave-normal direction as the direction of propagation. As early as 1822, Fresnel discussed his perpendicular axes with Cauchy.
Brewster himself immediately and correctly attributed this phenomenon to stress-induced birefringence — now known as photoelasticity. In a memoir read in September 1822, Fresnel announced that he had verified Brewster's diagnosis more directly, by compressing a combination of glass prisms so severely that one could actually see a double image through it.
In the memoir of December 1822, in which he introduced the term circular polarization, he reported that he had confirmed this prediction.
The resulting 137-page essay, titled De la Lumière (On Light), was apparently finished in June 1821 and published by February 1822.
Their report, of which Arago was clearly the main author, was delivered at the meeting of 19 August 1822.
The official test, conducted on the unfinished Arc de Triomphe on 20 August 1822, was witnessed by the commission – and by Louis and his entourage – from 32km away.
Still finer steps can be found in low-cost plastic "sheet" magnifiers. == Honors == Fresnel was elected to the Société Philomathique de Paris in April 1819, and in 1822 became one of the editors of the Société's Bulletin des Sciences.
In November 1822, Fourier's elevation to Permanent Secretary of the Académie created a vacancy in the physics section, which was filled in February 1823 by Pierre Louis Dulong, with 36 votes to Fresnel's 20.
The lunar features Promontorium Fresnel and Rimae Fresnel were later named after him. == Decline and death == Fresnel's health, which had always been poor, deteriorated in the winter of 1822–1823, increasing the urgency of his original research, and (in part) preventing him from contributing an article on polarization and double refraction for the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Until then, the best published source on his work on double refraction was an extract of that memoir, printed in 1822.
Fresnel, 1822b, "Mémoire sur un nouveau système d'éclairage des phares", read 29 July 1822; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, pp. 97–126; translated by T. Tag as "Memoir upon a new system of lighthouse illumination", U.S.
Fresnel had measured it for a range of angles of incidence, for glass and water, and the agreement between the calculated and measured angles was better than 1.5° in all cases. Fresnel gave details of the "mechanical solution" in a memoir read to the Académie des Sciences on 7 January 1823.
This was followed by the memoir on reflection, read in January 1823, in which Fresnel quantified the phase shifts in total internal reflection, and thence calculated the precise angle at which a Fresnel rhomb should be cut in order to convert linear polarization to circular polarization.
On 25 July 1823, the world's first lighthouse Fresnel lens was lit.
In November 1822, Fourier's elevation to Permanent Secretary of the Académie created a vacancy in the physics section, which was filled in February 1823 by Pierre Louis Dulong, with 36 votes to Fresnel's 20.
But in May 1823, after another vacancy was left by the death of Jacques Charles, Fresnel's election was unanimous.
His final treatment of partial reflection and total internal reflection, read to the Académie in January 1823, was thought to be lost until it was rediscovered among the papers of the deceased Joseph Fourier (1768–1830), and was printed in 1831.
Until then, it was known chiefly through an extract printed in 1823 and 1825.
He attended to these matters in his "second memoir" on double refraction, a consolidation and re-ordering of his work on the subject, published in the Recueils of the Académie des Sciences for 1824; this was not actually printed until late 1827, a few months after his death.
Soon afterwards, Fresnel started coughing up blood. In May 1824, Fresnel was promoted to secretary of the Commission des Phares, becoming the first member of that body to draw a salary, albeit in the concurrent role of Engineer-in-Chief.
He was also an examiner (not a teacher) at the École Polytechnique since 1821; but poor health, long hours during the examination season, and anxiety about judging others induced him to resign that post in late 1824, to save his energy for his lighthouse work. In the same year he designed the first fixed lens – for spreading light evenly around the horizon while minimizing waste above or below.
In 1824, Fresnel was made a chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour). Meanwhile, in Britain, the wave theory was yet to take hold; Fresnel wrote to Thomas Young in November 1824, saying in part: But "the praise of English scholars" soon followed.
In 1827 he was awarded the society's Rumford Medal for the year 1824, "For his Development of the Undulatory Theory as applied to the Phenomena of Polarized Light, and for his various important discoveries in Physical Optics." A monument to Fresnel at his birthplace was dedicated on 14 September 1884 with a speech by , Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences. "" is among the 72 names embossed on the Eiffel Tower (on the south-east side, fourth from the left).
Soon afterwards, it became clear that his condition was tuberculosis. In 1824 he was advised that if he wanted to live longer, he needed to scale back his activities.
The manuscript was received by the publisher's agent in Paris in early September 1824, and promptly forwarded to London.
Fresnel, 1827, "Mémoire sur la double réfraction", Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, vol. (for 1824, printed 1827), pp. 45–176; reprinted as "Second mémoire…" in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 479–596; translated by A.W. Hobson as "Memoir on double refraction", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 238–333.
According to Eugene Frankel, "in Paris no debate on the issue seems to have taken place after 1825.
By the end of the 1830s, the only prominent British physicist who held out against the wave theory was Brewster, whose objections included the difficulty of explaining photochemical effects and (in his opinion) dispersion. A German translation of De la Lumière was published in installments in 1825 and 1828.
The second Fresnel lens to enter service was indeed a fixed lens, of third order, installed at Dunkirk by 1 February 1825.
However, due to the difficulty of fabricating large toroidal prisms, this apparatus had a 16-sided polygonal plan. In 1825 Fresnel extended his fixed-lens design by adding a rotating array outside the fixed array.
On 9 June 1825, Fresnel was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London.
His last note to the Académie, read on 13 June 1825, described the first radiometer and attributed the observed repulsive force to a temperature difference.
Until then, it was known chiefly through an extract printed in 1823 and 1825.
Although his fundamental research ceased, his advocacy did not; as late as August or September 1826, he found the time to answer Herschel's queries on the wave theory.
It was Herschel who recommended Fresnel for the Royal Society's Rumford Medal. Fresnel's cough worsened in the winter of 1826–1827, leaving him too ill to return to Mathieu in the spring.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel ( or ; ; 10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century.
He attended to these matters in his "second memoir" on double refraction, a consolidation and re-ordering of his work on the subject, published in the Recueils of the Académie des Sciences for 1824; this was not actually printed until late 1827, a few months after his death.
Meanwhile, Young's translation of Fresnel's De la Lumière was published in installments from 1827 to 1829.
In 1827 he was awarded the society's Rumford Medal for the year 1824, "For his Development of the Undulatory Theory as applied to the Phenomena of Polarized Light, and for his various important discoveries in Physical Optics." A monument to Fresnel at his birthplace was dedicated on 14 September 1884 with a speech by , Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences. "" is among the 72 names embossed on the Eiffel Tower (on the south-east side, fourth from the left).
The Académie meeting of 30 April 1827 was the last that he attended.
The inscription on his headstone is partly eroded away; the legible part says, when translated, "To the memory of Augustin Jean Fresnel, member of the Institute of France". == Posthumous publications == Fresnel's "second memoir" on double refraction was not printed until late 1827, a few months after his death.
Fresnel, 1827, "Mémoire sur la double réfraction", Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, vol. (for 1824, printed 1827), pp. 45–176; reprinted as "Second mémoire…" in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 479–596; translated by A.W. Hobson as "Memoir on double refraction", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 238–333.
It was circulating privately by 1828 and was published in 1830.
By the end of the 1830s, the only prominent British physicist who held out against the wave theory was Brewster, whose objections included the difficulty of explaining photochemical effects and (in his opinion) dispersion. A German translation of De la Lumière was published in installments in 1825 and 1828.
Meanwhile, Young's translation of Fresnel's De la Lumière was published in installments from 1827 to 1829.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel ( or ; ; 10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular theory, from the late 1830s until the end of the 19th century.
It was circulating privately by 1828 and was published in 1830.
By the end of the 1830s, the only prominent British physicist who held out against the wave theory was Brewster, whose objections included the difficulty of explaining photochemical effects and (in his opinion) dispersion. A German translation of De la Lumière was published in installments in 1825 and 1828.
The wave theory was adopted by Fraunhofer in the early 1820s and by Franz Ernst Neumann in the 1830s, and then began to find favor in German textbooks. The economy of assumptions under the wave theory was emphasized by William Whewell in his History of the Inductive Sciences, first published in 1837.
B. Powell), 1857, "Fresnel" (elegy read at the Public Meeting of the Academy of Sciences, 26 July 1830), in D.F.J. Arago (tr. W.H. Smyth, B. Powell, and R. Grant), Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (single-volume edition), London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857, pp. 399–471.
George Biddell Airy, the former Lucasian Professor at Cambridge and future Astronomer Royal, unreservedly accepted the wave theory by 1831.
His final treatment of partial reflection and total internal reflection, read to the Académie in January 1823, was thought to be lost until it was rediscovered among the papers of the deceased Joseph Fourier (1768–1830), and was printed in 1831.
In 1834 he famously calculated the diffraction pattern of a circular aperture from the wave theory, thereby explaining the limited angular resolution of a perfect telescope .
Lloyd, 1834, "Report on the progress and present state of physical optics", Report of the Fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (held at Edinburgh in 1834), London: J. Murray, 1835, pp. 295–413. E.
Lloyd, 1834, "Report on the progress and present state of physical optics", Report of the Fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (held at Edinburgh in 1834), London: J. Murray, 1835, pp. 295–413. E.
By allowing the coefficients to be complex, Fresnel even accounted for the different phase shifts of the s and p components due to total internal reflection. This success inspired James MacCullagh and Augustin-Louis Cauchy, beginning in 1836, to analyze reflection from metals by using the Fresnel equations with a complex refractive index.
from French glass; it entered service at the Isle of May in 1836.
The wave theory was adopted by Fraunhofer in the early 1820s and by Franz Ernst Neumann in the 1830s, and then began to find favor in German textbooks. The economy of assumptions under the wave theory was emphasized by William Whewell in his History of the Inductive Sciences, first published in 1837.
According to Robert H. Silliman, Poisson eventually accepted the wave theory shortly before his death in 1840. Among the French, Poisson's reluctance was an exception.
The task was initially entrusted to Félix Savary, who died in 1841.
The first large catadioptric lenses were fixed third-order lenses made in 1842 for the lighthouses at Gravelines and Île Vierge.
The memoir introducing the parallelepiped form of the Fresnel rhomb, read in March 1818, was mislaid until 1846, and then attracted such interest that it was soon republished in English.
The latter decision, although puzzling in the context of double refraction, was consistent with the earlier treatment of aether drag. In 1846, George Gabriel Stokes pointed out that there was no need to divide the aether inside a moving object into two portions; all of it could be considered as moving at a common velocity.
Fresnel, 1818a, "Mémoire sur les couleurs développées dans les fluides homogènes par la lumière polarisée", read 30 March 1818 (according to Kipnis, 1991, p. 217), published 1846; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 655–83; translated by E. Ronalds & H. Lloyd as "Memoir upon the colours produced in homogeneous fluids by polarized light", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 44–65.
The first fully catadioptric first-order lens, installed at Ailly in 1852, gave eight rotating beams assisted by eight catadioptric panels at the top (to lengthen the flashes), plus a fixed light from below.
The first fully catadioptric lens with purely revolving beams – also of first order – was installed at Saint-Clément-des-Baleines in 1854, and marked the completion of Augustin Fresnel's original Carte des Phares. Production of one-piece stepped dioptric lenses—roughly as envisaged by Buffon—became practical in 1852, when John L.
Fresnel, 1818a, "Mémoire sur les couleurs développées dans les fluides homogènes par la lumière polarisée", read 30 March 1818 (according to Kipnis, 1991, p. 217), published 1846; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 655–83; translated by E. Ronalds & H. Lloyd as "Memoir upon the colours produced in homogeneous fluids by polarized light", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 44–65.
Fresnel, 1827, "Mémoire sur la double réfraction", Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, vol. (for 1824, printed 1827), pp. 45–176; reprinted as "Second mémoire…" in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 479–596; translated by A.W. Hobson as "Memoir on double refraction", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 238–333.
Taylor (ed.), 1852, Scientific Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies, and from Foreign Journals (in English), vol. , London: Taylor & Francis. W.
The first fully catadioptric lens with purely revolving beams – also of first order – was installed at Saint-Clément-des-Baleines in 1854, and marked the completion of Augustin Fresnel's original Carte des Phares. Production of one-piece stepped dioptric lenses—roughly as envisaged by Buffon—became practical in 1852, when John L.
Fulgence died in Bagdad in 1855 having led a mission to explore Babylon.
G. Peacock), 1855, Miscellaneous Works of the late Thomas Young, London: J. Murray, vol. 1. == Further reading == Some English translations of works by Fresnel are included in the above Bibliography.
B. Powell), 1857, "Fresnel" (elegy read at the Public Meeting of the Academy of Sciences, 26 July 1830), in D.F.J. Arago (tr. W.H. Smyth, B. Powell, and R. Grant), Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (single-volume edition), London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857, pp. 399–471.
Whewell, 1857, History of the Inductive Sciences: From the Earliest to the Present Time, 3rd Ed., London: J.W. Parker & Son, vol. 2, book , chapters . E.
After the wave theory of light was subsumed by Maxwell's electromagnetic theory in the 1860s, some attention was diverted from the magnitude of Fresnel's contribution.
Of the three editors eventually named in the Oeuvres, Sénarmont died in 1862, Verdet in 1866, and Léonor Fresnel in 1869, by which time only two of the three volumes had appeared.
Most of Fresnel's writings on polarized light before 1821 – including his first theory of chromatic polarization (submitted 7 October 1816) and the crucial "supplement" of January 1818 — were not published in full until his Oeuvres complètes ("complete works") began to appear in 1866.
Of the three editors eventually named in the Oeuvres, Sénarmont died in 1862, Verdet in 1866, and Léonor Fresnel in 1869, by which time only two of the three volumes had appeared.
Fresnel, 1819, "Mémoire sur l'action que les rayons de lumière polarisée exercent les uns sur les autres", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 10, pp. 288–305, March 1819; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 509–22; translated as "On the action of rays of polarized light upon each other", in Crew, 1900, pp. 145–55. G.-A.
Fresnel, 1816, "Mémoire sur la diffraction de la lumière" ("Memoir on the diffraction of light"), Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 1, pp. 239–81 (March 1816); reprinted as "Deuxième Mémoire…" ("Second Memoir…") in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 89–122. Not to be confused with the later "prize memoir" (Fresnel, 1818b). A.
Fresnel, 1818a, "Mémoire sur les couleurs développées dans les fluides homogènes par la lumière polarisée", read 30 March 1818 (according to Kipnis, 1991, p. 217), published 1846; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 655–83; translated by E. Ronalds & H. Lloyd as "Memoir upon the colours produced in homogeneous fluids by polarized light", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 44–65.
Fresnel, 1821a, "Note sur le calcul des teintes que la polarisation développe dans les lames cristallisées" et seq., Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 102–11 (May 1821), 167–96 (June 1821), 312–15 ("Postscript", July 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 609–48; translated as "On the calculation of the tints that polarization develops in crystalline plates, & postscript", / , 2021. A.
Fresnel, 1821b, "Note sur les remarques de M. Biot...", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 393–403 (August 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 601–608; translated as "Note on the remarks of Mr. Biot relating to colors of thin plates", / , 2021. A.
Fresnel, 1821c, Letter to D.F.J.Arago, 21 September 1821, in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 257–9; translated as "Letter to Arago on biaxial birefringence", Wikisource, April 2021. A.
Fresnel, 1822b, "Mémoire sur un nouveau système d'éclairage des phares", read 29 July 1822; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 3, pp. 97–126; translated by T. Tag as "Memoir upon a new system of lighthouse illumination", U.S.
Fresnel, 1827, "Mémoire sur la double réfraction", Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, vol. (for 1824, printed 1827), pp. 45–176; reprinted as "Second mémoire…" in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, pp. 479–596; translated by A.W. Hobson as "Memoir on double refraction", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 238–333.
For notable errata in the original edition, and consequently in the translation, see Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 2, p. 596n.) A.
de Sénarmont, E. Verdet, and L. Fresnel), 1866–70, Oeuvres complètes d'Augustin Fresnel (3 volumes), Paris: Imprimerie Impériale; vol. 1 (1866), vol. 2 (1868), vol. 3 (1870). I.
Of the three editors eventually named in the Oeuvres, Sénarmont died in 1862, Verdet in 1866, and Léonor Fresnel in 1869, by which time only two of the three volumes had appeared.
In 1827 he was awarded the society's Rumford Medal for the year 1824, "For his Development of the Undulatory Theory as applied to the Phenomena of Polarized Light, and for his various important discoveries in Physical Optics." A monument to Fresnel at his birthplace was dedicated on 14 September 1884 with a speech by , Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences. "" is among the 72 names embossed on the Eiffel Tower (on the south-east side, fourth from the left).
The two notes, together with Ampère's acknowledgment, were eventually published in 1885. == Lost works == Fresnel's essay Rêveries of 1814 has not survived.
Fresnel, 1819, "Mémoire sur l'action que les rayons de lumière polarisée exercent les uns sur les autres", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 10, pp. 288–305, March 1819; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 509–22; translated as "On the action of rays of polarized light upon each other", in Crew, 1900, pp. 145–55. G.-A.
Crew (ed.), 1900, The Wave Theory of Light: Memoirs by Huygens, Young and Fresnel, American Book Company. O.
Whittaker, 1910, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity: From the age of Descartes to the close of the nineteenth century, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., chapters . J.
Kettle), 1911, Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science: A contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century, Freiburg im Breisgau: B. Herder, pp. 146–9. T.H.
Thompson as Treatise on Light, University of Chicago Press, 1912; Project Gutenberg, 2005.
(Cited page numbers match the 1912 edition and the Gutenberg HTML edition.) F.A.
(On the translator's identity, see pp. 425n,452n.) Erratum: In the translator's note on p. 413, a plane tangent to the outer sphere at point t should intersect the refractive surface (assumed flat); then, through that intersection, tangent planes should be drawn to the inner sphere and spheroid (cf. Mach, 1926, p.263). D.F.J.
J.S. Anderson & A.F.A. Young), The Principles of Physical Optics: An Historical and Philosophical Treatment, London: Methuen & Co., 1926. I.
So it was that, as late as 1927, the astronomer Eugène Michel Antoniadi declared Fresnel to be "the dominant figure in optics." == See also == ==Explanatory notes== == References == === Citations === ===Bibliography=== D.F.J.
(London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012.
Boutry, 1948, "Augustin Fresnel: His time, life and work, 1788–1827", Science Progress, vol. 36, no. 144 (October 1948), pp. 587–604; jstor.org/stable/43413515. J.Z.
By the 1950s, the substitution of plastic for glass made it economic to use fine-stepped Fresnel lenses as condensers in overhead projectors.
(London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012.
Silliman, 1967, Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827) and the Establishment of the Wave Theory of Light (PhD dissertation, ), Princeton University, submitted 1967, accepted 1968; available from ProQuest (missing the first page of the preface). R.H.
Silliman, 1967, Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827) and the Establishment of the Wave Theory of Light (PhD dissertation, ), Princeton University, submitted 1967, accepted 1968; available from ProQuest (missing the first page of the preface). R.H.
Frankel, 1974, "The search for a corpuscular theory of double refraction: Malus, Laplace and the competition of 1808", Centaurus, vol. 18, no. 3 (September 1974), pp. 223–245. E.
Frankel, 1976, "Corpuscular optics and the wave theory of light: The science and politics of a revolution in physics", Social Studies of Science, vol. 6, no. 2 (May 1976), pp. 141–84; jstor.org/stable/284930. A.
White, 1976, Fundamentals of Optics, 4th Ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, . N.
(London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012.
Buchwald, 1989, The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light: Optical Theory and Experiment in the Early Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago Press, . J.Z.
Worrall, 1989, "Fresnel, Poisson and the white spot: The role of successful predictions in the acceptance of scientific theories", in D. Gooding, T. Pinch, and S. Schaffer (eds.), The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences, Cambridge University Press, , pp. 135–57. T.
For a more comprehensive list, see "External links" below. The most detailed secondary source on Fresnel in English is apparently Buchwald 1989 —in which Fresnel, although not named in the title, is clearly the central character. On lighthouse lenses, this article heavily cites Levitt 2013, Elton 2009, and Thomas Tag at the U.S.
Grattan-Guinness, 1990, Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800–1840, Basel: Birkhäuser, vol. 2, , chapter 13 (pp. 852–915, "The entry of Fresnel: Physical optics, 1815–1824") and chapter 15 (pp. 968–1045, "The entry of Navier and the triumph of Cauchy: Elasticity theory, 1819–1830"). C.
Fresnel, 1818a, "Mémoire sur les couleurs développées dans les fluides homogènes par la lumière polarisée", read 30 March 1818 (according to Kipnis, 1991, p. 217), published 1846; reprinted in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 655–83; translated by E. Ronalds & H. Lloyd as "Memoir upon the colours produced in homogeneous fluids by polarized light", in Taylor, 1852, pp. 44–65.
Kipnis, 1991, History of the Principle of Interference of Light, Basel: Birkhäuser, , chapters . K.A.
Thompson as Treatise on Light, University of Chicago Press, 1912; Project Gutenberg, 2005.
Silliman, 2008, "Fresnel, Augustin Jean", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, vol. 5, pp. 165–71.
Elton, 2009, "A Light to Lighten our Darkness: Lighthouse Optics and the Later Development of Fresnel's Revolutionary Refracting Lens 1780–1900", International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, vol. 79, no. 2 (July 2009), pp. 183–244; . E.
Levitt, 2009, The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848, Oxford, . T.H.
For a more comprehensive list, see "External links" below. The most detailed secondary source on Fresnel in English is apparently Buchwald 1989 —in which Fresnel, although not named in the title, is clearly the central character. On lighthouse lenses, this article heavily cites Levitt 2013, Elton 2009, and Thomas Tag at the U.S.
(London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012.
Darrigol, 2012, A History of Optics: From Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, . J.
(London: William Innys, 1730; Project Gutenberg, 2010); republished with Foreword by A. Einstein and Introduction by E.T. Whittaker (London: George Bell & Sons, 1931); reprinted with additional Preface by I.B. Cohen and Analytical Table of Contents by D.H.D. Roller, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1952, 1979 (with revised preface), 2012.
Buchwald, 2013, "Optics in the Nineteenth Century", in J.Z. Buchwald and R. Fox (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics, Oxford, , pp. 445–72. H.
Levitt, 2013, A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse, New York: W.W. Norton, . H.
For a more comprehensive list, see "External links" below. The most detailed secondary source on Fresnel in English is apparently Buchwald 1989 —in which Fresnel, although not named in the title, is clearly the central character. On lighthouse lenses, this article heavily cites Levitt 2013, Elton 2009, and Thomas Tag at the U.S.
Lighthouse Society, accessed 26 August 2017; archived 19 August 2016.
Lighthouse Society, accessed 26 August 2017; archived 19 August 2016.
Fresnel, 1821a, "Note sur le calcul des teintes que la polarisation développe dans les lames cristallisées" et seq., Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 102–11 (May 1821), 167–96 (June 1821), 312–15 ("Postscript", July 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 609–48; translated as "On the calculation of the tints that polarization develops in crystalline plates, & postscript", / , 2021. A.
Fresnel, 1821b, "Note sur les remarques de M. Biot...", Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Ser.2, vol. 17, pp. 393–403 (August 1821); reprinted (with added section nos.) in Fresnel, 1866–70, vol. 1, pp. 601–608; translated as "Note on the remarks of Mr. Biot relating to colors of thin plates", / , 2021. A.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05