FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN. - THE UNDULATORY THEORY OF LIGHT ESTABLISHED.

Ueber die Diffraction des Lichts. (Mèmoires de l'acad. roy. des Scences etc. T. V. p. 339). (+) Auszug aus einer Abhandlung über die Reflexion des Lichts. (Ann. de chim. et de phys. T. XV p.379).

(Leipzig, Joh. Ambrosius Barth, 1833).

Contemp. hcalf. Spine gilt. Very light wear to spine ends and edges. In: "Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Hrsg.von Poggendorff", Jahrgang 1833 (Bd. 30), Ergäntzungsheft. 376 pp. a. 2 folded engraved plates. 2 small stamps to p.1 and a small stamp to verso of plates. (Entire volume offered). Fresnel's papers: pp. 100-255 a. pp. 255-261. Clean and fine.

First German edition of Fresnel's epoch-making memoir from the French Academy (1826) and incorporating his experimental results from the years 1815-19, in which he for the first time explained the causes of the diffraction effects as the mutual interference of the secondary waves emitted by those portions of the original wave-front which have not been obstructed by the diffraction screen. His methods of calculation utilized the principles of both Huygens and Young and he summed the effects due to different portions of the same primary wave-front. He demonstrates that the transverse wave theory of light explains the observed phenomena of reflection, refraction, interference, polarization, difraction patterns, diffraction fringes etc., making a strong case for the theory of the transverse nature of light waves. The memoir records also Fresnel's famous mirror-experiment.

"In broad contect Fresnel's work can be viewed as the first successfull assault on the theory of imponderables and a major influence on the development of nineteenth-centurty energetics." (DSB V, p. 171).

"Augustin Fresnel seems to have adopted a wave theory of light from the very beginning of his studies. His first paper, presented to the Academy...in October 1815, and entitled "La Diffraction de la Lumiere" (the paper offered), was written after a long correspondance with Arago, who had promised Fresnel his full support. "The wave theory" Fresnel wrote, "is well suited to explaining the complicated propagation of light phenomena, and since, as we know from the case of sound, waves can surcomvent obstacles, I decided to make a study of shadows.....It is because they cross in regions common to them both that two pencils of rays can produce fringes. hence it follows that the vibrations of rays which cross at very small angles can cancel out whenever crests of one correspond to the throughs of the other."

The voume contains further a notable paper by AMPÈRE "Bestimmung der krummen Fläche der Lichtswellen in einem Mittel, dessen Elasticität verschieden ist nach den drei Hauptrichtungen, d.h. nach debjenigen, in welchem die von der Elasticität erregte Kraft in desselben Richtung wirkt, in der die Theilchen dieses Mittels verschoben wurden." First German edition. Pp. 262-295.

Order-nr.: 43919