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Another supporter of the wave theory was Leonhard Euler. He argued in Nova theoria lucis et colorum (1746) that diffraction could more easily be explained by a wave theory. In 1816 André-Marie Ampère gave Augustin-Jean Fresnel an idea that the polarization of light can be explained by the wave theory if light were a transverse wave. [37]
In part correct, [2] being able to successfully explain refraction, reflection, rectilinear propagation and to a lesser extent diffraction, the theory would fall out of favor in the early nineteenth century, as the wave theory of light amassed new experimental evidence. [3] The modern understanding of light is the concept of wave-particle duality.
The source of Einstein's proposal that light was composed of particles (or could act as particles in some circumstances) was an experimental anomaly not explained by the wave theory: the photoelectric effect, in which light striking a metal surface ejected electrons from the surface, causing an electric current to flow across an applied voltage.
In the late 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton had advocated that light was corpuscular (particulate), but Christiaan Huygens took an opposing wave description. While Newton had favored a particle approach, he was the first to attempt to reconcile both wave and particle theories of light, and the only one in his time to consider both, thereby anticipating modern wave-particle duality.
Moreover, the 1862 paper already derived the speed of light c from the expression of the velocity of the electromagnetic wave in relation to the vacuum constants. The final form of Maxwell's equations was published in 1865 A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field , [ 8 ] in which the theory is formulated in strictly mathematical form.
A theory of electromagnetism, known as classical electromagnetism, was developed by several physicists during the period between 1820 and 1873, when James Clerk Maxwell's treatise was published, which unified previous developments into a single theory, proposing that light was an electromagnetic wave propagating in the luminiferous ether. [26]
In the late 1660s and early 1670s, Isaac Newton expanded Descartes's ideas into a corpuscle theory of light, famously determining that white light was a mix of colours that can be separated into its component parts with a prism. In 1690, Christiaan Huygens proposed a wave theory for light based on suggestions that had been made by Robert Hooke ...
The electromagnetic theory of light adds to the old undulatory theory an enormous province of transcendent interest and importance; it demands of us not merely an explanation of all the phenomena of light and radiant heat by transverse vibrations of an elastic solid called ether, but also the inclusion of electric currents, of the permanent ...