Optics: Did you mean...?

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English mathematician and physicist widely regarded as the single most important figure in the Scientific Revolution for his three laws of motion and universal law of gravity. Newton's laws became a fundamental...

The Royal Society was founded in 1662 to promote scientific research and increase our knowledge of the natural world. With royal patronage and a stellar membership of great minds, the society quickly gained international recognition for its...

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French mathematician, natural scientist, and philosopher, best known by the phrase 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think therefore I am'). He published works on optics, coordinate geometry, physiology, and cosmology...

Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100 to c. 170 CE) was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. His works survived antiquity and the Middle Ages intact, and his theories, particularly on a geocentric model of the universe with planets...

Euclid of Alexandria (lived c. 300 BCE) systematized ancient Greek and Near Eastern mathematics and geometry. He wrote The Elements, the most widely used mathematics and geometry textbook in history. Older books sometimes confuse him with...

Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was an English scientist, architect, and natural philosopher who became a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. Hooke conducted his scientific experiments outside the auspices of universities, and he was a great...

Two prisms illustrating the discovery by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) that a single beam of white light could be split into a spectrum of colours, each colour being refracted at a slightly different angle from the other.

The Scientific Revolution (1500-1700), which occurred first in Europe before spreading worldwide, witnessed a new approach to knowledge gathering – the scientific method – which utilised new technologies like the telescope to observe, measure...

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), leader of Nazi Germany, attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941 with the largest army ever assembled. The Axis offensive of June-December 1941 was code-named Operation Barbarossa ('Redbeard') after Frederick Barbarossa...

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German astronomer and mathematician most famous for creating what was up to that point the most accurate model of planetary astronomy with his three laws of planetary motion. Kepler was the first to present...