EULER ON LIGHT RAYS

EULER, [LEONHARD].

Reflexions sur un probleme de geometrie traite par quelques geometres et qui es neanmoins impossible (+) Recherches physiques sur la diverse refrangibilite des rayons de lumiere.

(Berlin, Haude et Spener, 1756). 4to. No wrappers as issued in "Memoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres". tome X, pp. 173-199; pp. 200-226.

First printing of two Euler-papers in which he occupies himself with an unsolvable geometric problem and the physics of the different refrangibilities of light rays, a field Euler made important and original contributions to.

Euler's wave theory of light, published in 1746, was based on an analogy between sound and light to a more and more mathematical elaboration on that notion. His wave theory degenerated, and it was not until Fresnel introduced transverse waves and an elaborate notion of interference that the wave theory again progressed. He was the second after Christian Huygens to proposed a wave theory of light, and thereby one of the earliest to argue against Newton's particle theory of light. His 1740s papers on optics helped ensure that the wave theory of light proposed by Christian Huygens would become the dominant mode of thought until the development of the quantum theory of light.

See Eneström E220, E221.

Order-nr.: 44265