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THE LUMINARIUM

A Celebration of Light

Pioneers of Light

From ancient scholars to modern physicists, these thinkers revealed light's secrets.

Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040)

Father of optics, first to describe camera obscura

His 'Book of Optics' influenced science for centuries

Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

Showed white light contains spectrum of colors

Opticks (1704) unified color theory

Thomas Young (1773-1829)

Proved wave nature of light with double-slit experiment

Explained interference and color vision

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

Unified electricity, magnetism, and light

Light is an electromagnetic wave

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Explained photoelectric effect, light's particle nature

Won 1921 Nobel Prize for this work

Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

Explained how atoms emit specific colors of light

Quantum model of the atom

Theodore Maiman (1927-2007)

Built the first working laser on May 16, 1960

Light amplified by stimulated emission

Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906-1972)

Predicted two-photon absorption

Nobel Prize 1963 for nuclear shell model

Arthur Ashkin (1922-2020)

Invented optical tweezers using light pressure

Nobel Prize 2018 at age 96

Donna Strickland (1959-)

Chirped pulse amplification for high-intensity lasers

Nobel Prize 2018, third woman in physics