Abstract
Since the ancient Greek era, several theories of the nature of light have been postulated. The Greek philosopher Aristotle and his contemporaries first attempted to explain how the sensation of vision is caused and how light comes to earth from the sun or the stars. They were also concerned with the nature of light and the mechanism of vision. However, their postulates on the nature of light, due to the lack of experiments, were only of philosophical character and they were not able to formulate a systematic theory of light capable of explaining the optical phenomena involved in the propagation of light or the interaction of light and matter.
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References
M. Born, E. Wolf: Principles of Optics, 5th ed. (Pergamon Press, London 1975) pp. 1–18, 665–690
B. Rossi: Optics, 3rd ed. (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1965)
G. N. Ramachandran, S. Ramaseshan: “Crystal Optics”, in Crystal Optics, Diffraction, ed. by S. Flügge, Encyclopedia of Physics, Vol. 25/1 (Springer, Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg 1961) pp. 1–217
Books
Born, M., Wolf, E.: Principles of Optics, 5th. ed. (Pergamon Press, London 1975) Chap.14, pp.1–18, 665–690
Ramachandran, G.N., Ramaseshan, S.: “Crystal Optics”, in Crystal Optics Diffraction, ed. by S. Flügge, Encyclopedia of Physics, Vol. 25/1 (Springer, Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg 1961) pp.54–85
Rossi, B.: Optics, 3rd ed. (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. 1965) Chaps.6,7, pp.266–347
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© 1979 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Theocaris, P.S., Gdoutos, E.E. (1979). Electromagnetic Theory of Light. In: Matrix Theory of Photoelasticity. Springer Series in Optical Sciences, vol 11. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-35789-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-35789-6_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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