For over two thousand years, humanity has tried to answer one question:
What is light, and what has it taught us about the universe?
This gallery follows that conversation from ancient geometry to quantum physics.
The Changing Nature of Light
Over centuries, explanations of light changed profoundly. Each new answer created more questions.
Geometry → Observation → Experiment → Measurement → Wave → Field → Quantum
A Conversation Across Generations
c. 300 BC
Euclid
How can vision be described mathematically?
Established the geometry of vision.
c. AD 150
Ptolemy
How do reflection and refraction behave?
Extended mathematical optics through observation.
c. 1021
Ibn al-Haytham
How can observation test theories of light?
United mathematics with experiment and transformed the study of optics.
1604
Johannes Kepler
How does the eye form images?
Explained retinal image formation and advanced geometrical optics.
1611
Francesco Maurolico
How can light be understood through mathematics?
Culminated the Renaissance tradition of geometrical optics.
1665
Francesco Maria Grimaldi
How does light behave?
Discovered and named diffraction, establishing a new experimental approach to light.
1690
Christiaan Huygens
Could light be a wave?
Developed the first coherent wave theory of light.
1704
Isaac Newton
What is light?
Transformed experimental optics and developed a corpuscular theory of light.
1729
Pierre Bouguer
Can the intensity of light be compared?
Developed pioneering methods for the quantitative comparison of light.
1760
Johann Heinrich Lambert
How can light be measured?
Established photometry as a systematic mathematical science.
1802
Thomas Young
Can light travel as a wave?
Established interference as powerful evidence for the wave theory of light.
1823
Augustin-Jean Fresnel
Can wave theory explain light completely?
Established wave optics on a rigorous mathematical and experimental foundation.
1865
James Clerk Maxwell
Is light and electromagnetic wave?
Unified light, electricity and magnetism.
1887
Heinrich Hertz
Can Maxwell’s theory be demonstrated experimentally?
Provided compelling experimental confirmation of Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves.
1905
Albert Einstein
Can light be a wave and a particle?
Introduced the light quantum and transformed the understanding of rediation.
20th-21st centuries
Quantum Optics
How does slight behave at the quantum level?
Photons, lasers and quantum information continue the conversation.