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Treatise on Light

Christiaan Huygens

Silvanus P. Thompson (1912)

Christiaan Huygens's Treatise on Light (Traité de la Lumière, composed 1678, published 1690) is the founding text of the wave theory of light. Against the corpuscular view, Huygens argues that light is propagated as waves through a subtle ether, and formulates the principle—now bearing his name—that every point of a wave-front is itself the source of secondary wavelets. With it he gives elegant geometric explanations of reflexion, refraction, and the strange double refraction of Iceland crystal. The translation is Silvanus P. Thompson's of 1912.

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Contents

  1. Preface
  2. Chapter I: On Rays Propagated in Straight Lines
  3. Chapter II: On Reflexion
  4. Chapter III: On Refraction
  5. Chapter IV: On the Refraction of the Air
  6. Chapter V: On the Strange Refraction of Iceland Crystal
  7. Chapter VI: On the Figures of the Transparent Bodies