- Augustin-Jean Fresnel
Infobox Scientist
name = Augustin-Jean Fresnel
box_width =
image_width =150px
caption = Augustin-Jean Fresnel
birth_date = Birth date|1788|5|10
birth_place = Broglie (Eure )
death_date = death date and age|1827|7|14|1788|5|10
death_place =
residence =
citizenship =
nationality = French
ethnicity =
field = physicist
work_institutions =
alma_mater =
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for = wave optics
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo =
influences =
influenced =
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (IPA-fr|ɔgystɛ̃ ʒɑ̃ fʁɛnɛl; pronEng|freɪˈnɛl "fray-NELL" in English) (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827), was a French physicist who contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behaviour of light both theoretically and experimentally.Biography
Fresnel was the son of an architect, born at Broglie (
Eure ). His early progress in learning was slow, and he still could not read when he was eight years old. At thirteen he entered the École Centrale inCaen , and at sixteen and a half theÉcole Polytechnique , where he acquitted himself with distinction. From there he went to the École des Ponts et Chaussées. He served as an engineer successively in the departments ofVendée ,Drôme andIlle-et-Vilaine ; but having supported the Bourbons in 1814 he lost his appointment on Napoleon's return to power.On the second restoration of the monarchy, he obtained a post as engineer in
Paris , where much of his life from that time was spent. His researches in optics, continued until his death, appear to have begun about the year 1814, when he prepared a paper on theaberration of light , which, however, was not published. In 1818 he wrote a memoir ondiffraction for which in the ensuing year he received the prize of the Académie des Sciences at Paris. He was in 1823 unanimously elected a member of the academy, and in 1825 he became a member of theRoyal Society of London , which in 1827, at the time of his last illness, awarded him theRumford Medal . In 1819 he was nominated a commissioner oflighthouse s, for which he was the first to construct a special type of lens, now called aFresnel lens , as substitutes for mirrors. He died oftuberculosis atVille-d'Avray , near Paris.His labours in the cause of optical science received during his lifetime only scant public recognition, and some of his papers were not printed by the Académie des Sciences till many years after his death. But as he wrote to Young in 1824: in himself "that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory" had been blunted. "All the compliments," he says, "that I have received from Arago, Laplace and Biot never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery of a theoretic truth, or the confirmation of a calculation by experiment."
Research
His discoveries and mathematical deductions, building on experimental work by Thomas Young, extended the wave theory of
light to a large class of optical phenomena. In 1817, Young had proposed a small transverse component to light, while yet retaining a far larger longitudinal component. Fresnel, by the year 1821, was able to show via mathematical methods that polarization could be explained only if light was "entirely" transverse, with no longitudinal vibration whatsoever.His use of two plane mirrors of metal, forming with each other an angle of nearly 180°, allowed him to avoid the diffraction effects caused (by the apertures) in the experiment of F. M. Grimaldi on
interference . This allowed him to conclusively account for the phenomenon of interference in accordance with the wave theory.With
François Arago he studied the laws of the interference of polarized rays. He obtained circularly polarized light by means of a rhombus of glass, known as aFresnel rhomb , having obtuse angles of 126° and acute angles of 54°.He is perhaps best known as the inventor of the
Fresnel lens , first adopted inlighthouse s while he was a French commissioner of lighthouses, and found in many applications today.ee also
*
Fresnel equations
*Fresnel diffraction
*Fresnel integral
*Fresnel lantern
*Fresnel lens
*Fresnel rhomb
*Fresnel zone
*Fresnel zone plate
*Fresnel number
*Fresnel drag
*Fizeau experiment
*Huygens-Fresnel principle External link and reference
*
*
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.