FORMULATING FRESNEL'S "SINE-LAW AND" FRESNEL'S "TANGENT LAW"

FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN.

Mémoire sur la Loi des modifications que la réflexion imprime à la lumière polarisée. (Lu a l'Academie, le 7 janvier 1823).

Paris, Crochard, 1831.

8vo. In blank wrappers. In: "Annales de Chimie et de Physique, Par MM. Gay-Lussac et Arago.", tome 46, Cahier 3. Occassional brownspotting, otherwise fine. Pp. 225-264.

First printing of this important paper in which Fresnel formulates a theory of reflection and refraction referring them to the dynamical properties of the luminiferous media and stating the two laws that bears his name, the "Sine-law" and the "Tangent-law".

This memoir was for some time considered lost, it was presented to the Academy in 1823, but found later in the papers of Fourier. "Ce Mémoire, qu'on ecroyait égaré, vient d'étre retrouvé dans les papiers de M. Fourier. Comme il n'est connu que par des extraits tout-è-fait insuffisand (voyez Ann.. t. XXIX, p. 175), nous nous empressons d'en enrichir les Annales."(Editor's footnote).

In the memoir "He adopts Young's principle, that reflection and refraction are due to differences in the inertia of the aether in different material bodies, and supposes (as in the memoir on aberration) that the inertia is proportional to the inverse square of the velocity of propagation of light in the medium. The conditions which he proposes to satisfy at the interface between two media are that the displacements of the aadjacent molecules, resolved parallell to this interface, shall be equal in the two media; and that the energy of the reflwected and refracted waves together shall be equal to that of the incident wave."(Whittaker "A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity" I, p.123).

Order-nr.: 60098