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Die Widerlegung der Theorie der molécules puppiformes. Eine verschollene Abhandlung von Augustin Jean Fresnel

1988; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1600-0498.1988.tb00739.x

1600-0498

Burghard Weiss,

History and advancements in chemistry

Beginning in 1815 Augustin Jean Frcsnel published a series of papers questioning the Newtonian projectile theory of light. On reporting positively on Fresne's 1816 paper on polarization before the National Institute in 1821, Arago stirred up the famous controversy between émissionaires and ndulateurs. It has passed unnoticed up to now that Fresnel did not only attack the theory of mobile polarization of his Parisian adversary Jean Baptiste Biot but also, at the same time, the corpuscular-mechanical theory of light put forward by the Genevan physicist Pierre Prevost. Prevost. a close friend of Biot, had published his Deux traités de physique mécanique in 1818. In critically commenting upon that work, Fresnel shattered the foundations of Prevost's theory of shuttle-shaped molecules (molécules puppiformes). The original of his commentary, which was handed down to Prevost by Francois Arago himself, seems to be lost, but traces have been left among the Prevost papers kept at the University Library of Geneva. These traces are used for the reconstruction of Fresne's argument.