Overview

Johannes Kepler's (1571-1630) early seventeenth-century researches on the nature of light were the culmination of medieval developments in the science of perspectiva and inaugurated a century of research that laid the foundations of modern optics. Willebrord Snell (1580-1626) shortly thereafter discovered the law of refraction, which allowed mathematical-physical theories of light to be developed in earnest, while René Descartes (1596-1650) developed a mechanistic wave-theory of light that did much to define the boundaries for future optical studies. Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was the first to successfully mathematize the wave picture, while Isaac Newton (1642-1727) developed a corpuscular theory. The two latter views were eventually synthesized in quantum theory during the early years of the twentieth century.

Background

Theories...