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FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN (1788-1827)
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See also:FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN See also:JEAN (1788-1827) , See also:French physicist, the son of an architect, was See also:born at See also:Broglie (See also:Eure) on the loth of May 1788. His See also:early progress in learning was slow, and when eight years old he was still unable to read. At the See also:age of thirteen he entered the Ecole Centrale in See also:Caen, and at sixteen and a See also:half the Ecole Polytechnique, where he acquitted himself with distinction. Thence he went to the Ecole See also:des Ponts et Chaussees. He served as an engineer successively in the departments of See also:Vendee, Drbme and Ille-et-Villaine; but his espousal of the cause of the Bourbons in 1814 occasioned, on See also:Napoleon's re-See also:accession to See also:power, the loss of his See also:appointment. On the second restoration he obtained a See also:post as engineer in See also:Paris, where much of his See also:life from that See also:time was spent. His researches in See also:optics, continued until his See also:death, appear to have been begun about the See also:year 1814, when he prepared a See also:paper on the See also:aberration of See also:light, which, however, was not published. In 1818 he read a memoir on diffraction for which in the ensuing year he received the See also:prize of the See also:Academic des Sciences at Paris. He was in 1823 unanimously elected a member of the See also:academy, and in 1825 he became a member of the Royal Society of See also:London, which in 1827, at the time of his last illness, awarded him the See also:Rumford See also:medal. In 1819 he was nominated a See also:commissioner of lighthouses, for which he was the first to construct See also:compound lenses as substitutes for mirrors. He died of See also:consumption at Ville-d'Avray, near Paris, on the 14th of See also:July 1827.
The undulatory theory of light, first founded upon experimental demonstration by See also: By the use of two See also:plane mirrors of See also:metal, forming with each other an See also:angle of nearly 180°, he avoided the diffraction caused in the experiment of F. M. See also:Grimaldi (1618—1663) on interference by the employment of apertures for the transmission of the light, and was thus enabled in the most conclusive manner to See also:account for the phenomena of interference in accordance with the undulatory theory. With D. F. J. See also:Arago he studied the See also:laws of the interference of polarized rays. Circularly polarized light he obtained by means of a rhomb of See also:glass, known as " Fresnel's rhomb," having obtuse angles of 126°, and acute angles of 54°. His labours in the cause of optical See also:science received during his lifetime only scant public recognition, and some of his papers were not printed by the Academic des Sciences till many years after his decease. But, as he wrote to Young in 1824, in him " that sensibility, or that vanity, which See also:people See also:call love of See also:glory" had been blunted. " All the compliments," he says, " that I have received from Arago, See also:Laplace and See also:Biot never gave me so much See also:pleasure as the See also:discovery of a theoretic truth, or the See also:confirmation of a calculation by experiment." See Duleau, "See also:Notice sur Fresnel," Revue ency. t. xxxix. ; Arago, (Fumes completes, t. i.; and Dr G. See also:Peacock, See also:Miscellaneous See also:Works of Thomas Young, vol. i. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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