Timeline of electromagnetism and classical optics

Timeline of electromagnetism and classical Optics

130 — Ptolemy tabulates angles of refraction for several media,

1269 — Pélerin de Maricourt describes magnetic poles and remarks on the nonexistence of Magnetic monopole,

1305 — Dietrich von Freiberg uses crystalline spheres and flasks filled with water to study the reflection and refraction in raindrops that leads to primary and secondary rainbows,

1604 — Johannes Kepler describes how the eye focuses light,

1604 — Johann Kepler specifies the laws of the rectilinear propagation of the light,

1611 — Marko Dominis discusses the rainbow in De Radiis Visus et Lucis ,

1611 — Johannes Kepler discovers total internal reflection, a small angle refraction law, and thin lens (optics) optics,

1621 — Willebrord van Roijen Snell states his Snell s law of refraction,

1630 — Cabaeus found that there are two types of electric charges

1637 — René Descartes quantitatively derives the angles at which primary and secondary rainbows are seen with respect to the angle of the Sun s elevation,

1657 — Pierre de Fermat introduces the Fermat s principle into optics,

1665 — Francesco Maria Grimaldi highlights the phenomenon of diffraction

1673 — Ignace Pardies provides a wave explanation for refraction of light

1675 — Isaac Newton delivers his theory of light

1676 — Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing Jupiter (planet) s Natural satellites

1678 — Christian Huygens states Huygens principle of wavefront sources,

1704 — Isaac Newton publishes Opticks , a corpuscular theory of light and colour,

1728 — James Bradley discovers the Aberration of light of starlight and uses it to determine that the speed of light is about 283,000 kilometre/second,

1746 — Leonhard Euler develops the wave theory of light refraction and dispersion

1752 — Benjamin Franklin shows that lightning is electricity,

1767 — Joseph Priestley proposes an electrical inverse-square law,

1785 — Charles Coulomb introduces the Coulomb s law,

1786 — Luigi Galvani discovers animal electricity and postulates that animal bodies are storehouses of electricity,

1800 — William Herschel discovers infrared radiation from the Sun

1801 — Johann Wilhelm Ritter discovers ultraviolet radiation from the Sun,

1801 — Thomas Young (scientist) demonstrates the wave nature of light and the principle of interference,

1802 — Gian Domenico Romagnosi notes that a nearby voltaic pile deflects a magnetic needle. His account is largely overlooked.

1808 — Etienne-Louis Malus discovers polarization by reflection,

1809 — Etienne-Louis Malus publishes the law of Malus which predicts the light intensity transmitted by two polarizing sheets,

1811 — François Jean Dominique Arago discovers that some quartz crystals will continuously rotate the electric vector of light,

1816 — David Brewster discovers stress birefringence,

1818 — Simeon Poisson predicts the Arago spot at the center of the shadow of a circular opaque obstacle,

1818 — François Jean Dominique Arago verifies the existence of the Poisson-Arago bright spot,

1820 — Hans Christian Ã?rsted notices that a Current (electricity) in a wire can deflect a compass needle,

1825 — Augustin Fresnel phenomenologically explains optical activity by introducing circular birefringence,

1826 — Georg Ohm states his Ohm s law of electrical resistance,

1831 — Michael Faraday states Faraday s law of induction of induction,

1833 — Heinrich Lenz states that an induced current in a closed conducting loop will appear in such a direction that it opposes the change that produced it (Lenz s law),

1845 — Michael Faraday discovers that light propagation in a material can be influenced by external magnetic fields,

1849 — Hippolyte Fizeau and Jean-Bernard Foucault measure the speed of light to be about 298,000 km/s,

1852 — George Gabriel Stokes defines the Stokes parameters of polarization,

1864 — James Clerk Maxwell publishes his papers on a dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field,

1871 — Lord Rayleigh discusses the blue sky law and sunsets (Rayleigh scattering),

1873 — James Clerk Maxwell states that light is an electromagnetic phenomenon,

1875 — John Kerr (physicist) discovers the electrically induced birefringence of some liquids,

1879 — Joseph Stefan discovers the Stefan-Boltzmann law of a black body and uses it to calculate the first sensible value of the temperature of a Sun s surface to be 5700 Kelvin,

1888 — Heinrich Rudolf Hertz discovers radio waves,

1895 — Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovers X-rays,

1896 — Arnold Sommerfeld solves the half-plane diffraction problem

1905 — Albert Einstein demonstrates that Maxwell s Equations are not required to describe electromagnetic radiation if Special Relativity is taken into account

1919 — Albert Michelson makes the first interferometric measurements of stellar diameters at Mount Wilson Observatory (see history of astronomical interferometry)

1946 — Martin Ryle and Vonberg build the first two-element astronomical radio interferometer (see history of astronomical interferometry)

1953 — Charles H. Townes, James P. Gordon, and Herbert J. Zeiger produce the first maser.

1956 — Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect complete the interferometer.

1960 — Theodore Maiman produces the first working laser.

1999 — M. Henny et al demonstrate the Fermionic Hanbury Brown and Twiss Experiment