laws double refraction established (1 Ergebnisse)

Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1809. Without wrappers as issued in "Annalen der Physik und der Physikalischen Chemie. Hrsg. Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert", Bd. 31, Drittes Stück. Titlepage to vol. 31. Pp. 225-336 a. 1 engraved plate. (Entire issue offered). Malus's papers: pp. 225-234 a. pp. 286-294. Wollaston's papers: pp. 235-251 a. pp. 252-262 a. Erläuterungen von Gilbert pp. 263-273. Laplace's paper: pp. 274-285. First apperance in German of these importent papers on the refraction and double refraction of light. The papers by Malus is his first two papers on the refraction of light and Laplace's paper is the memoir in which he commented Malus' paper and Huygen's refraction law. "In 1788 Haüy found experimentally that Huygen's law was true only in certain special cases, but in 1802 Wollaston found experimental evidence for the Huygenian construction (the second Wollaston paper offered). In "Mémoire sur la mesure du pouvoir réfringent" (the first paper offered) Malus showed that Wollaston's experiments were incomplete, and so the French corpuscularian physicists did not trust Wollaston's results. They thought, moreover, that Wollaston was associated with Tmomas Young and therfore with the new wave hypothesis. In this situation the Institute on January 1808 proposed a prize which required an experimental and theoretical explanation of double refraction. The French "Newtonian" scientists hoped that Malus would find a precise and general law for double refraction within the framework of an emission theory of light. Malus was a skilled mathematician and during 1807 he had carried out experiments on double refraction. By december 1808 Malus had finished his experimental investigations, which verified the Huygenian law. What remained was a theoretical deduction of the law. In January 1809, Laplace published a memoir in which he deduced Huygen's law law within the framework of Newtonian mechanics, using the principle of least action, and Malus considered this an insolence which deprived him of the priority. In 1810 Malus von the prize for his "Théorie sur la double réfraction", published in 1811."(DSB IX, p. 73).