Timeline of electromagnetism and classical optics
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Timeline of electromagnetism and classical optics
- 130 � Claudius Ptolemy tabulates angles of refraction for several media,
- 1269 � [[P�lerin de Maricourt]] describes magnetic poles and remarks on the nonexistence of isolated magnetic poles,
- 1305 � Dietrich von Freiberg uses crystalline spheres and flasks filled with water to study the reflection and refraction in raindrops that leads to primary and secondary rainbows,
- 1604 � Johannes Kepler describes how the eye focuses light,
- 1604 � Johann Kepler specifies the laws of the rectilinear propagation of the light,
- 1611 � Marko Dominis discusses the rainbow in De Radiis Visus et Lucis,
- 1611 � Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection, a small angle refraction law, and thin lens optics,
- 1621 � Willebrord van Roijen Snell states his Snell's law of refraction,
- 1630 � Cabaeus found that there are two types of electric charges
- 1637 � [[Ren� Descartes]] quantitatively derives the angles at which primary and secondary rainbows are seen with respect to the angle of the Sun's elevation,
- 1657 � Pierre de Fermat introduces the principle of least time into optics,
- 1665 � Francesco Maria Grimaldi highlights the phenomenon of diffraction
- 1673 � Ignace Pardies provides a wave explanation for refraction of light
- 1675 � Isaac Newton delivers his theory of light
- 1676 � [[Ole R�mer|Olaus Roemer]] measures the speed of light by observing Jupiter's moons
- 1678 � Christian Huygens states his principle of wavefront sources,
- 1704 � Isaac Newton publishes Opticks, a corpuscular theory of light and colour,
- 1728 � James Bradley discovers the aberration of starlight and uses it to determine that the speed of light is about 283,000 km/s,
- 1746 � Leonhard Euler develops the wave theory of light refraction and dispersion
- 1752 � Benjamin Franklin shows that lightning is electricity,
- 1767 � Joseph Priestley proposes an electrical inverse-square law,
- 1785 � Charles Coulomb introduces the inverse-square law of electrostatics,
- 1786 � Luigi Galvani discovers "animal electricity" and postulates that animal bodies are storehouses of electricity,
- 1800 � William Herschel discovers infrared radiation from the Sun
- 1801 � Johann Ritter discovers ultraviolet radiation from the Sun,
- 1801 � Thomas Young demonstrates the wave nature of light and the principle of interference,
- 1808 � Etienne-Louis Malus discovers polarization by reflection,
- 1809 � Etienne-Louis Malus publishes the law of Malus which predicts the light intensity transmitted by two polarizing sheets,
- 1811 � [[Fran�ois Jean Dominique Arago]] discovers that some quartz crystals will continuously rotate the electric vector of light,
- 1816 � David Brewster discovers stress birefringence,
- 1818 � Simeon Poisson predicts the Poisson-Arago bright spot at the center of the shadow of a circular opaque obstacle,
- 1818 � Fran�ois Jean Dominique Arago verifies the existence of the Poisson-Arago bright spot,
- 1820 � [[Hans Christian �rsted]] notices that a current in a wire can deflect a compass needle,
- 1825 � Augustin Fresnel phenomenologically explains optical activity by introducing circular birefringence,
- 1826 � Georg Simon Ohm states his Ohm's law of electrical resistance,
- 1831 � Michael Faraday states his law of induction,
- 1833 � Heinrich Lenz states that an induced current in a closed conducting loop will appear in such a direction that it opposes the change that produced it (Lenz's law),
- 1845 � Michael Faraday discovers that light propagation in a material can be influenced by external magnetic fields,
- 1849 � Hippolyte Fizeau and Jean-Bernard Foucault measure the speed of light to be about 298,000 km/s,
- 1852 � George Gabriel Stokes defines the Stokes parameters of polarization,
- 1864 � James Clerk Maxwell publishes his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field,
- 1871 � Lord Rayleigh discusses the blue sky law and sunsets (Rayleigh scattering),
- 1873 � James Clerk Maxwell states that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon,
- 1875 � John Kerr discovers the electrically induced birefringence of some liquids,
- 1879 � Jo�ef Stefan discovers the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law of a black body and uses it to calculate the first sensible value of the temperature of a Sun's surface to be 5700 K,
- 1888 � Heinrich Rudolf Hertz discovers radio waves,
- 1895 � [[Wilhelm Conrad R�ntgen]] discovers X-rays,
- 1896 � Arnold Sommerfeld solves the half-plane diffraction problem,
- 1956 � R. Hanbury-Brown and R.Q. Twiss complete the correlation interferometer.
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Timeline_of_electromagnetism_and_classical_optics" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_electromagnetism_and_classical_optics, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
