PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: optics
English physicist and mathematician
Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated...
German astronomer
Johannes Kepler German astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows: (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the...
German scientist and philosopher
Hermann von Helmholtz was a German scientist and philosopher who made fundamental contributions to physiology, optics, electrodynamics, mathematics, and meteorology. He is best known for his statement...
English clergyman and scientist
Joseph Priestley was an English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental chemistry. He is...
English philosopher and scientist
Roger Bacon was an English Franciscan philosopher and educational reformer who was a major medieval proponent of experimental science. Bacon studied mathematics, astronomy, optics, alchemy, and languages....
French mathematician
Pierre de Fermat was a French mathematician who is often called the founder of the modern theory of numbers. Together with René Descartes, Fermat was one of the two leading mathematicians of the first...
British scientist
Lord Rayleigh was an English physical scientist who made fundamental discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are basic to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. He received the Nobel...
French physicist
Augustin-Jean Fresnel was a French physicist who pioneered in optics and did much to establish the wave theory of light advanced by English physicist Thomas Young. Beginning in 1804 Fresnel served as an...
American physicist
Roy J. Glauber was an American physicist, who won one-half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2005 for contributions to the field of optics, the branch of physics that deals with the physical properties...
Scottish physicist
Sir David Brewster was a Scottish physicist noted for his experimental work in optics and polarized light—i.e., light in which all waves lie in the same plane. When light strikes a reflective surface at...
Italian astronomer
Giovanni Battista Amici was an astronomer and optician who made important improvements in the mirrors of reflecting telescopes and also developed prisms for use in refracting spectroscopes (instruments...
English optician and mathematician
Peter Barlow was an optician and mathematician who invented two varieties of achromatic (non-colour-distorting) telescope lenses known as Barlow lenses. Self-educated, he became assistant mathematics master...
British physicist
Raymond Neil Wilson was a British physicist who pioneered the field of active optics. Wilson received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Birmingham University. He received a doctoral degree from Imperial...
French humanist
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc was a French antiquary, humanist, and influential patron of learning who discovered the Orion Nebula (1610) and was among the first to emphasize the study of coins for historical...
Dutch inventor
Hans Lippershey was a spectacle maker from the United Netherlands, traditionally credited with inventing the telescope (1608). Lippershey applied to the States General of the Netherlands for a 30-year...
Italian inventor
Giuseppe Campani was an Italian optical-instrument maker who invented a lens-grinding lathe. Of peasant origin, Campani as a young man studied in Rome. There he learned to grind lenses and, with his two...
British physicist and historian
Silvanus Phillips Thompson was a British physicist and historian of science known for contributions in electrical machinery, optics, and X rays. He received both a B.A. (1869) and a D.Sc. (1878) from the...
Dutch physicist
Frits Zernike was a Dutch physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1953 for his invention of the phase-contrast microscope, an instrument that permits the study of internal cell structure without...
British optician
John Dollond was a British maker of optical and astronomical instruments who developed an achromatic (non-colour-distorting) refracting telescope and a practical heliometer, a telescope that used a divided...
Italian optician
Eustachio Divini was an Italian scientist, one of the first to develop the technology necessary for producing scientific optical instruments. After some scientific training under Benedetto Castelli, a...
British optician and astronomer
James Short was a British optician and astronomer who produced the first truly parabolic—hence nearly distortionless—mirrors for reflecting telescopes. Short entered the University of Edinburgh as a candidate...
British opticist
Joseph Jackson Lister was an English amateur opticist whose discoveries played an important role in perfecting the objective lens system of the microscope, elevating that instrument to the status of a...
British optician
George Dollond was a British optician who invented a number of precision instruments used in astronomy, geodesy, and navigation. Throughout most of his life, he worked for the family firm of mathematical...
Polish natural scientist and philosopher
Witelo was a Polish natural scientist and philosopher, best known for his Perspectiva (c. 1274). He studied arts at Paris and canon law at Padua and spent some time at the papal court in Viterbo. One of...
British optician
Peter Dollond was a British optician who, though lacking a theoretical background, invented the triple achromatic lens still in wide use, made substantial improvements in the astronomical refracting telescope,...
Arab astronomer and mathematician
Ibn al-Haytham was a mathematician and astronomer who made significant contributions to the principles of optics and the use of scientific experiments. Conflicting stories are told about the life of Ibn...
French philosopher and scientist
Jean Buridan was an Aristotelian philosopher, logician, and scientific theorist in optics and mechanics. After studies in philosophy at the University of Paris under the nominalist thinker William of Ockham,...
Italian philosopher
Giambattista della Porta was an Italian natural philosopher whose experimental research in optics and other fields was undermined by his credulous preoccupation with magic and the miraculous. Della Porta...
French mineralogist
Alfred Lacroix was a French mineralogist whose Minéraux des roches (1888; “The Minerals of Rocks”), written with the geologist Albert Michel-Lévy, was a pioneer study of the optical properties of rock-forming...
German physicist
Karl August Steinheil was a German physicist who did pioneering work in telegraphy, optics, and photometry. Steinheil received the Ph.D. at Königsberg in 1825 and in 1832 began to teach physics and mathematics...
Italian art connoisseur
Francesco Algarotti was a cosmopolitan connoisseur of the arts and sciences who was esteemed by the philosophers of the Enlightenment for his wide knowledge and elegant presentation of advanced ideas....
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