| Opticks; or, a treatise of the reflexions, refractions, inflexions and colours of light | |
| 1704 |  |
| Isaac Newton(1642-1727) | |
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From 1664 to 1665, young Newton read several books on optics, among them Descartes’s La dioprique, Keplar’s Optik and Hook’s Micrographia, that aroused his interest in the mathematical theory of reflection and refraction, as well as practical aspects of optics such as the grinding of lenses, innovation of the telescope, and observations of actual optical phenomena. It was in 1666 that Newton made one of the most important discoveries in the field of optics while striving to grind non-spherical lenses that would eliminate spherical and chromatic aberrations. He discovered that light could be dispersed by a prism into the colors of the spectrum, and then combined again with a white light through a second prism. He further verified that dispersed monochromatic color could not change color through the second prism and then disproved the long held theory that the colors of light were produced by the prism itself. With Newton’s demonstration that the colors of light were instead embodied in the white light, a revolutionary theory that denied the conventional theory of light modification was born. Newton first carried out this decisive experiment at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1666, then announced his theory before fellow members of the Royal Society five years later. The report immediately gave rise to keen controversies with other scientists. Newton was especially troubled with Hook’s confutation and the subsequent long argument with him that followed for several years. Newton also was irritated by Huygens’s indifference at that time. For this reason, he became reluctant to publish his scientific achievements for many years. It was not until over thirty years later that Newton published and fully discussed his achievements in optics in this book. In book I of this volume, Newton described the theory of geometric optics, and gave a detailed explanation of the above mentioned experimentation. Newton concluded here that it was impossible to make non-chromatic aberration lenses because each color had a different diffraction a |
