experiments of Young, Fresnel, Lloyd, Fizeau and Foucault,
of Fresnel and Arago on the measurement of refractive indices
by the shift of the interference bands, of H. F. Talbot on the
“Talbot bands” (which he insufficiently explained on the
principle of interference, it being shown by Sir G. B. Airy that
diffraction phenomena supervene), of Baden-Powell on the
“Powell bands,” of David Brewster on “Brewster’s bands,”
have been developed, together with many other phenomena—Newton’s
rings, the colours of thin, thick and mixed plates, &c.—in
a striking manner, one of the most important results being
the construction of interferometers applicable to the determination
of refractive indices and wave-lengths, with which the
names of Jamin, Michelson, Fabry and Perot, and of Lummer
and E. Gehrcke are chiefly associated. The mathematical
investigations of Fresnel may be regarded as being completed
by the analysis chiefly due to Airy, Stokes and Lord Rayleigh.
Mention may be made of Sir G. G. Stokes’ attribution of the
colours of iridescent crystals to periodic twinning; this view
has been confirmed by Lord Rayleigh (Phil. Mag., 1888) who,
from the purity of the reflected light, concluded that the laminae
were equidistant by the order of a wave-length. Prior to 1891
only interference between waves proceeding in the same direction
had been studied. In that year Otto H. Wiener obtained, on a
film 120th of a wave-length in thickness, photographic impressions
of the stationary waves formed by the interference of waves
proceeding in opposite directions, and in 1892 Drude and Nernst
employed a fluorescent film to record the same phenomenon.
This principle is applied in the Lippmann colour photography,
which was suggested by W. Zenker, realized by Gabriel Lippmann,
and further investigated by R. G. Neuhauss, O. H. Wiener,
H. Lehmann and others.
Great progress has been made in the study of diffraction, and “this department of optics is precisely the one in which the wave theory has secured its greatest triumphs” (Lord Rayleigh). The mathematical investigations of Fresnel and Poisson were placed on a dynamical basis by Sir G. G. Stokes; and the results gained more ready interpretation by the introduction of “Babinet’s principle” in 1837, and Cornu’s graphic methods in 1874. The theory also gained by the researches of Fraunhofer, Airy, Schwerd, E. Lommel and others. The theory of the concave grating, which resulted from H. A. Rowland’s classical methods of ruling lines of the necessary nature and number on curved surfaces, was worked out by Rowland, E. Mascart, C. Runge and others. The resolving power and the intensity of the spectra have been treated by Lord Rayleigh and Arthur Schuster, and more recently (1905), the distribution of light has been treated by A. B. Porter. The theory of diffraction is of great importance in designing optical instruments, the theory of which has been more especially treated by Ernst Abbe (whose theory of microscopic vision dates from about 1870) by the scientific staff at the Zeiss works, Jena, by Rayleigh and others. The theory of coronae (as diffraction phenomena) was originally due to Young, who, from the principle involved, devised the eriometer for measuring the diameters of very small objects; and Sir G. G. Stokes subsequently explained the appearances presented by minute opaque particles borne on a transparent plate. The polarization of the light diffracted at a slit was noted in 1861 by Fizeau, whose researches were extended in 1892 by H. Du Bois, and, for the case of gratings, by Du Bois and Rubens in 1904. The diffraction of light by small particles was studied in the form of very fine chemical precipitates by John Tyndall, who noticed the polarization of the beautiful cerulean blue which was transmitted. This subject—one form of which is presented in the blue colour of the sky—has been most auspiciously treated by Lord Rayleigh on both the elastic-solid and electromagnetic theories. Mention may be made of R. W. Wood’s experiments on thin metal films which, under certain conditions, originate colour phenomena inexplicable by interference and diffraction. These colours have been assigned to the principle of optical resonance, and have been treated by Kossonogov (Phys. Zeit., 1903). J. C. Maxwell Garnett (Phil. Trans. vol. 203) has shown that the colours of coloured glasses are due to ultra-microscopic particles, which have been directly studied by H. Siedentopf and R. Zsigmondy under limiting oblique illumination.
Polarization phenomena may, with great justification, be regarded as the most engrossing subject of optical research during the 19th century; the assiduity with which it was cultivated in the opening decades of that century received a great stimulus when James Nicol devised in 1828 the famous “Nicol prism,” which greatly facilitated the determination of the plane of vibration of polarized light, and the facts that light is polarized by reflection, repeated refractions, double refraction and by diffraction also contributed to the interest which the subject excited. The rotation of the plane of polarization by quartz was discovered in 1811 by Arago; if white light be used the colours change as the Nicol rotates—a phenomenon termed by Biot “rotatory dispersion.” Fresnel regarded rotatory polarization as compounded from right- and left-handed (dextro- and laevo-) circular polarizations; and Fresnel, Cornu, Dove and Cotton effected their experimental separation. Legrand des Cloizeaux discovered the enormously enhanced rotatory polarization of cinnabar, a property also possessed—but in a lesser degree—by the sulphates of strychnine and ethylene diamine. The rotatory power of certain liquids was discovered by Biot in 1815; and at a later date it was found that many solutions behaved similarly. A. Schuster distinguishes substances with regard to their action on polarized light as follows: substances which act in the isotropic state are termed photogyric; if the rotation be associated with crystal structure, crystallogyric; if the rotation be due to a magnetic field, magnetogyric; for cases not hitherto included the term allogyric is employed, while optically inactive substances are called isogyric. The theory of photogyric and crystallogyric rotation has been worked out on the elastic-solid (MacCullagh and others) and on the electromagnetic hypotheses (P. Drude, Cotton, &c.). Allogyrism is due to a symmetry of the molecule, and is a subject of the greatest importance in modern (and, more especially, organic) chemistry (see Stereoisomerism).
The optical properties of metals have been the subject of much experimental and theoretical inquiry. The explanations of MacCullagh and Cauchy were followed by those of Beer, Eisenlohr, Lundquist, Ketteler and others; the refractive indices were determined both directly (by Kundt) and indirectly by means of Brewster’s law; and the reflecting powers from λ = 251 µµ to λ = 1500 µµ were determined in 1900–1902 by Rubens and Hagen. The correlation of the optical and electrical constants of many metals has been especially studied by P. Drude (1900) and by Rubens and Hagen (1903).
The transformations of luminous radiations have also been studied. John Tyndall discovered calorescence. Fluorescence was treated by John Herschel in 1845, and by David Brewster in 1846, the theory being due to Sir G. G. Stokes (1852). More recent studies have been made by Lommel, E. L. Nichols and Merritt (Phys. Rev., 1904), and by Millikan who discovered polarized fluorescence in 1895. Our knowledge of phosphorescence was greatly improved by Becquerel, and Sir James Dewar obtained interesting results in the course of his low temperature researches (see Liquid Gases). In the theoretical and experimental study of radiation enormous progress has been recorded. The pressure of radiation, the necessity of which was demonstrated by Clerk Maxwell on the electromagnetic theory, and, in a simpler manner, by Joseph Larmor in his article Radiation in these volumes, has been experimentally determined by E. F. Nichols and Hull, and the tangential component by J. H. Poynting. With the theoretical and practical investigation the names of Balfour Stewart, Kirchhoff, Stefan, Bartoli, Boltzmann, W. Wien and Larmor are chiefly associated. Magneto-optics, too, has been greatly developed since Faraday’s discovery of the rotation of the plane of polarization by the magnetic field. The rotation for many substances was measured by Sir William H. Perkin, who attempted a correlation between rotation and composition. Brace effected the analysis of the beam into its two circularly polarized
