Joseph von Fraunhofer
Joseph von Fraunhofer | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 7 June 1826 | (aged 39)
Known for | Fraunhofer diffraction Fraunhofer lines Fraunhofer distance |
Joseph Ritter von Fraunhofer (
The German research organization
Biography
Joseph Fraunhofer was the 11th child, born into a
Joseph Utzschneider, a
It was at the Institute that Fraunhofer met Pierre-Louis Guinand (de), a Swiss glass technician, who instructed Fraunhofer in glassmaking at Utzschneider's behest.[8] By 1809, the mechanical part of the Optical Institute was chiefly under Fraunhofer's direction, and Fraunhofer became one of the members of the firm that same year.[9] In 1814, Guinand left the firm, as did Reichenbach. Guinand would later become a partner with Fraunhofer in the firm,[8] and the name was changed to Utzschneider-und-Fraunhofer. During 1818, Fraunhofer became the director of the Optical Institute. Due to the fine optical instruments developed by Fraunhofer, Bavaria overtook England as the center of the optics industry. Even the likes of Michael Faraday were unable to produce glass that could rival Fraunhofer.[5][6]
His illustrious career eventually earned him an
Like many
Invention and scientific research
One of the most difficult operations of practical optics during the time period of Fraunhofer's life was accurately polishing the spherical surfaces of large object glasses. Fraunhofer invented the machine which rendered the surface more accurately than conventional grinding. He also invented other grinding and polishing machines and introduced many improvements into the manufacture of the different kinds of glass used for optical instruments, which he always found to have flaws and irregularities of various sorts.[9]
In 1811, he constructed a new kind of furnace, and during his second melting session when he melted a large quantity of glass, he found that he could produce flint glass, which, when taken from the bottom of a vessel containing roughly 224 pounds of glass, had the same refractive power as glass taken from the surface. He found that English crown glass and German table glass both contained defects which tended to cause irregular refraction. In the thicker and larger glasses, there would be even more of such defects, so that in larger telescopes this kind of glass would not be fit for objective lenses. Fraunhofer accordingly made his own crown glass.[9]
It was thought that the accurate determination of power for a given medium to refract rays of light and separate the different colors which they contain was impeded by the absence of precise boundaries between the
Discovery of dark absorption lines
By 1814, Fraunhofer had invented the modern
Continuing to investigate, Fraunhofer detected dark lines also appearing in the spectra of several bright
These dark fixed lines were later shown to be mostly atomic absorption lines, as explained by
Invention of optical instruments
Fraunhofer also developed a
Ultimately, however, his primary passion was still practical optics; he once wrote that "In all my experiments I could, owing to lack of time, pay attention to only those matters which appeared to have a bearing upon practical optics".[17]
Telescopes and optical instruments
Fraunhofer produced various optical instruments for his firm. of Hamburg after Fraunhofer's death.
Works
- Kurzer Umriß der Lebens-Geschichte des Herrn Dr. Joseph von Fraunhofer.[19] By Joseph von Utzschneider. Rösl, 1826.
- [Opere] (in German). München: Verlag der königlich Akademie. 1888.
- Prismatic and diffraction spectra: memoirs. By Joseph von Fraunhofer, William Hyde Wollaston. American Book Co., 1899.
See also
- Fraunhofer (crater)
- German inventors and discoverers
Notes
- ^ Adolf Wißner (1961), "Fraunhofer, Joseph von (bayerischer Personaladel 1824)", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 5, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 382–384; (full text online)
- ^ Nautilus. Archived from the originalon 23 March 2014. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
- ^ "Society of Catholic Scientists". www.catholicscientists.org. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Archivedfrom the original on 25 July 2013. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-262-10084-7.
- ^ .
- ^ Ralf Kern: Wissenschaftliche Instrumente in ihrer Zeit. Band 4: Perfektion von Optik und Mechanik. Cologne, 2010. 355–356.
- ^ Bibcode:2000eaa..bookE3630. Archived from the originalon 16 May 2011. Retrieved 26 March 2011. (in English)
- ^ a b c d e This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). . Encyclopedia Americana.
- ISBN 978-2884491624.
- ^ See:
- Joseph Fraunhofer (1814–1815) "Bestimmung des Brechungs- und des Farben-Zerstreuungs – Vermögens verschiedener Glasarten, in Bezug auf die Vervollkommnung achromatischer Fernröhre" (Determination of the refractive and color-dispersing power of different types of glass, in relation to the improvement of achromatic telescopes), Denkschriften der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Munich), 5: 193–226; see especially pages 202–205 and the plate following page 226.
- Reprinted, with additional findings and notes, in: Joseph Fraunhofer (1817) "Bestimmung des Brechungs- und des Farben-Zerstreuungs – Vermögens verschiedener Glasarten, in Bezug auf die Vervollkommnung achromatischer Fernröhre" Archived 10 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine (Determination of the refractive and color-dispersing power of different types of glass, in relation to the improvement of achromatic telescopes), Annalen der Physik, 56: 264–313; see especially pages 278–286.
- ^ Fraunhofer (1814–1815), pages 220–221 Archived 10 March 2024 at the Wayback Machine: Original: Ich habe auch mit derselben Vorrichtung Versuche mit dem Lichte einiger Fixsterne erster Grösse gemachte. Da aber das Licht dieser Sterne noch vielmal schwächer ist, als das der Venus, so ist natürlich auch die Helligkeit des Farbenbildes vielmal geringer. Demohngeachtet habe ich, ohne Täuschung, im Farbenbilde vom Lichte des Sirius drey breite Streifen gesehen, die mit jenen vom Sonnenlichte keine Aehnlichkeit zu haben scheinen; einer dieser Streifen ist im Grünen, und zwey im Blauen. Auch im Farbenbilde vom Lichte anderer Fixsterne erster Grösse erkennt man Streifen; doch scheinen diese Sterne, in Beziehung auf die Streifen, unter sich verschieden zu seyn. Translation: With the same device [i.e., spectroscope], I've also made some experiments on the light of some stars of the first magnitude. Since the light of these stars is many times weaker than that of Venus, so naturally, the brightness of the spectrum is also many times less. Notwithstanding, I have seen – without any illusion – three broad stripes in the spectrum of Sirius, which seem to have no similarity to those of sunlight; one of these stripes is in the green, and two in the blue. Also, in the spectrum of the light of other fixed stars of the first magnitude, one detects stripes; yet these stars, in regard to the stripes, seem to differ among themselves.
- ^ See:
- Gustav Kirchhoff (1859) "Ueber die Fraunhofer'schen Linien" (On Fraunhofer's lines), Monatsbericht der Königlichen Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Monthly Report of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin), 662–665.
- Gustav Kirchhoff (1859) "Ueber das Sonnenspektrum" (On the sun's spectrum), Verhandlungen des naturhistorisch-medizinischen Vereins zu Heidelberg (Proceedings of the Natural History / Medical Association in Heidelberg), 1 (7): 251–255.
- ^ William Hyde Wollaston (1802) "A method of examining refractive and dispersive powers, by prismatic reflection," Archived 19 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 92: 365–380; see especially p. 378.
- ^ See:
- Frauhofer. Jos. (1821) "Neue Modifikation des Lichtes durch gegenseitige Einwirkung und Beugung der Strahlen, und Gesetze derselben" (New modification of light by the mutual influence and the diffraction of [light] rays, and the laws thereof), Denkschriften der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Science in Munich), 8: 3–76.
- Fraunhofer, Jos. (1823) "Kurzer Bericht von den Resultaten neuerer Versuche über die Gesetze des Lichtes, und die Theorie derselben" Archived 16 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine (Short account of the results of new experiments on the laws of light, and the theory thereof) Annalen der Physik, 74(8): 337–378.
- PMID 16849159.
- ^ Prismatic and Diffraction Spectra: Memoirs (1899) Tr. & Ed. J. S. Ames p. 10
- ^ A Guide to Edinburgh's Popular Observatory Archived 15 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Astronomical Society of Edinburgh
- ^ Tr. Brief outline of the life-story of Dr. Joseph von Fraunhofer
References
- I. Bernard Cohen; Henry Crew; Joseph von Fraunhofer; De Witt Bristol Brace (1981). The Wave theory, light and spectra. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-405-13867-6.
- Aller, Lawrence H. (1991). Atoms, Stars and Nebulae, 3rd ed. ISBN 978-0-521-32512-7.
- Klaus Hentschel: Mapping the spectrum. Techniques of visual representation in research and teaching. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 2002.
- Jackson, Myles W. (2000). Spectrum of Belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics. MIT Press. (German translation: Fraunhofers Spektren: Die Präzisionsoptik als Handwerkskunst, Wallstein Verlag, 2009.)
- Ralf Kern: Wissenschaftliche Instrumente in ihrer Zeit. Band 4: Perfektion von Optik und Mechanik. Cologne, 2010.
External links
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 43.
- "Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826)". National Center for Atmospheric Research & High Altitude Observatory.
- Howard-Duff, Ian (1987). "Joseph Fraunhofer (1787-1826)". Journal of the British Astronomical Association. 97. Bibcode:1987JBAA...97..339H.
vol.97, no.6, p.339-347
- "Joseph von Fraunhofer". Fraunhofer Society.
- "Joseph von Fraunhofer". Catholic Encyclopedia.
- "Joseph Fraunhofer". Encyclopedia.com.
- "Joseph von Fraunhofer". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- "Mikroskop von Utzschneider und Fraunhofer in Munich" (in German). Museum Optischer Intrumente.
- "Utzschneider & Fraunhofer, Merz & Mahler Refracting Telescope (Comet Seeker)". National Museum of American History.
- "Utzschneider, Reichenbach and Fraunhofer Telescope". National Museum of American History.