Customer Reviews:
 A delightful account from one of the Pioneers in Optics October 12, 2007
Vivek Sharma (Cambridge / Boston, MA, USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Treatise of Light by Christian Huygens was published in 1690. The questions about the nature of light, how fast it travels, why it travels at all, and of course the phenomenon of reflection, refraction, birefringence are addressed using geometrical optics. These questions were quite current and poorly understood back then. While the book appears to be just a delightful exercise in geometry, it contains proofs and discussions relevant to ray optics that are used to the day. The book also shows how astute Huygens was as a scientist and as an experimentalist. No wonder his work has survived the test of time, and continues to be relevant to the day. Even though the book contains many ideas that have been discarded in face of modern knowledge, the perspective obtained by reading through Huygens arguments, makes it to worthwhile read.
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