Optician and physicist — Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826) was a Bavarian optician and physicist, considered the founder of modern precision optics. Orphaned and apprenticed to a glassmaker in his youth, he became a master at producing extremely high-quality glass and lenses. While studying the solar spectrum to calibrate his instruments, he identified and catalogued hundreds of dark absorption lines, today called Fraunhofer lines, laying the foundations of spectroscopy and of the analysis of the chemical composition of stars. He perfected the diffraction grating, using it to precisely measure the wavelengths of light, and built achromatic lenses and telescopes that made Bavaria the world leader in optical instrumentation. He died at just thirty-nine, probably from the effects of the toxic heavy-metal vapours used in glassmaking.
Trivia
As a boy he was buried under the collapse of the master glassmaker’s workshop: he was rescued from the rubble by the Prince-Elector of Bavaria himself, who then funded his studies; his epitaph reads “Approximavit sidera”, “he brought the stars closer”.
Theories and contributions
- Fraunhofer lines — Dark absorption lines in the solar spectrum, underlying spectroscopy and the chemical analysis of starlight.
- Diffraction grating — Instrument for measuring wavelengths; the maxima satisfy .
- Fraunhofer diffraction — Far-field diffraction regime (plane waves), fundamental in wave optics.
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Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.