Gabriel Lippmann
Encyclopedia
Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann (16 August 1845 – 13 July 1921) was a Franco
-Luxembourg
ish physicist
and inventor, and Nobel laureate in physics
for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference.
, Luxembourg, on 16 August 1845. At the time, Bonnevoie was part of the commune of Hollerich
which is often given as his place of birth. His father, Isaïe, a French Jew born in Ennery
near Metz
, managed the family glove-making business at the former convent in Bonnevoie. In 1848, the family moved to Paris
where Lippmann was initially tutored by his mother, Miriam Rose Lévy, before attending the Lycée Napoléon (now Lycée Henri-IV). He was said to have been a rather inattentive but thoughtful pupil with a special interest in mathematics. In 1868, he was admitted to the Ecole normale supérieure
in Paris where he failed the agrégation
examination which would have enabled him to enter the teaching profession, preferring instead to study physics. In 1872, the French government sent him on a mission to Heidelberg University where he was able to specialize in electricity with the encouragement of Gustav Kirchhoff, receiving a doctorate with the "summa cum laude" distinction in 1874. Lippmann then returned to Paris in 1875, where he continued to study until 1878, when he became professor of physics at the Sorbonne
.
which was used in the first ECG machine. In a paper delivered to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow on 17 January 1883, John G. M'Kendrick described the apparatus as follows:
Lippmann's PhD thesis, presented to the Sorbonne on 24 July 1875, was on electrocapillarity
.
for 1908.
In 1886, Lippmann's interest turned to a method of fixing the colours of the solar spectrum
on a photographic plate
. On 2 February 1891, he announced to the Academy of Sciences: "I have succeeded in obtaining the image of the spectrum with its colours on a photographic plate whereby the image remains fixed and can remain in daylight without deterioration." By April 1892, he was able to report that he had succeeded in producing colour images of a stained glass window, a group of flags, a bowl of oranges topped by a red poppy and a multicoloured parrot. He presented his theory of colour photography using the interference method in two papers to the Academy, one in 1894, the other in 1906.
The interference phenomenon in optics occurs as a result of the wave propagation
of light
. When light of a given wavelength is reflected back upon itself by a mirror, standing wave
s are generated, much as the ripples resulting from a stone dropped into still water create standing waves when reflected back by a surface such as the wall of a pool. In the case of ordinary incoherent
light, the standing waves are distinct only within a microscopically thin volume of space next to the reflecting surface.
Lippmann made use of this phenomenon by projecting an image onto a special photographic plate
capable of recording detail smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. The light passed through the supporting glass sheet into a very thin and nearly transparent photographic emulsion
containing submicroscopic
ally small silver halide
grains. A temporary mirror of liquid mercury in intimate contact reflected the light back through the emulsion, creating standing waves whose nodes
had little effect while their antinodes
created a latent image
. After development
, the result was a structure of laminae, distinct parallel layers composed of submicroscopic metallic silver grains, which was a permanent record of the standing waves. In each part of the image, the spacing of the laminae corresponded to the wavelengths of the light photographed.
The finished plate was illuminated from the front at a nearly perpendicular
angle, using daylight or another source of white light containing the full range of wavelengths in the visible spectrum
. At each point on the plate, light of approximately the same wavelength as the light which had generated the laminae was strongly reflected back toward the viewer. Light of other wavelengths which was not absorbed or scattered by the silver grains simply passed through the emulsion, usually to be absorbed by a black anti-reflection coating applied to the back of the plate after it had been developed. The wavelengths, and therefore the colours, of the light which had formed the original image were thus reconstituted and a full-colour image was seen.
The Lippmann process was not easy to use in practice. Extremely fine-grained high-resolution photographic emulsion
s are inherently much less light-sensitive than ordinary emulsions, so long exposure times were required. With a lens of large aperture and a very brightly sunlit subject, a camera exposure of less than one minute was sometimes possible, but exposures measured in minutes were typical. Pure spectral colours reproduced brilliantly, but the ill-defined broad bands of wavelengths reflected by real-world objects could be problematic. The process did not produce colour prints on paper and it proved impossible to make a good duplicate of a Lippmann colour photograph by rephotographing it, so each image was unique. A very shallow-angled prism was usually cemented to the front of the finished plate to deflect unwanted surface reflections, and this made plates of any substantial size impractical. The lighting and viewing arrangement required to see the colours to best effect precluded casual use. Although the special plates and a plate holder with a built-in mercury reservoir were commercially available for a few years circa 1900, even expert users found consistent good results elusive and the process never graduated from being a scientifically elegant laboratory curiosity. It did, however, stimulate interest in the further development of colour photography
.
Lippmann's process foreshadowed laser
holography
, which is also based on recording standing waves in a photographic medium. Denisyuk
reflection holograms, often referred to as Lippmann-Bragg holograms, have similar laminar structures that preferentially reflect certain wavelengths. In the case of actual multiple-wavelength colour holograms of this type, the colour information is recorded and reproduced just as in the Lippmann process, except that the highly coherent laser light passing through the recording medium and reflected back from the subject generates the required distinct standing waves throughout a relatively large volume of space, eliminating the need for reflection to occur immediately adjacent to the recording medium. Unlike Lippmann colour photography, however, the lasers, the subject and the recording medium must all be kept stable to within one quarter of a wavelength during the exposure in order for the standing waves to be recorded adequately or at all.
, in which a plane array of closely spaced small lenses is used to photograph a scene, recording images of the scene as it appears from many slightly different horizontal and vertical locations. When the resulting images are rectified and viewed through a similar array of lenses, a single integrated image, composed of small portions of all the images, is seen by each eye. The position of the eye determines which parts of the small images it sees. The effect is that the visual geometry of the original scene is reconstructed, so that the limits of the array seem to be the edges of a window through which the scene appears life-size and in three dimensions, realistically exhibiting parallax and perspective shift with any change in the position of the observer.
s, devising a method of comparing the times of oscillation of two pendulums of nearly equal period.
from 8 February 1886 until his death, serving as its President in 1912. In addition, he was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London
, a member of the Bureau des Longitudes
, and a member of the Grand Ducal Institute
. He became a member of the Société française de photographie
in 1892 and its president from 1896 to 1899. Lippmann was one of the founders of the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée in France.
in 1888. He died on 13 July 1921 aboard the steamer France while en route from Canada.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
-Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
ish physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and inventor, and Nobel laureate in physics
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference.
Early life and education
Gabriel Lippmann was born in BonnevoieBonnevoie
Bonnevoie is an area of south-eastern Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. It is divided between the quarters of North Bonnevoie-Verlorenkost and South Bonnevoie. It is the biggest neighbourhood in the city, with more than 15,000 inhabitants....
, Luxembourg, on 16 August 1845. At the time, Bonnevoie was part of the commune of Hollerich
Hollerich
Hollerich is a quarter in south-western Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg.In 2001, the quarter had a population of 5,569 people.Hollerich railway station is located on Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois Line 70, which connects Luxembourg City to the south-west of the country...
which is often given as his place of birth. His father, Isaïe, a French Jew born in Ennery
Ennery, Moselle
Ennery is a commune in the Moselle department in Lorraine in north-eastern France....
near Metz
Metz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
, managed the family glove-making business at the former convent in Bonnevoie. In 1848, the family moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where Lippmann was initially tutored by his mother, Miriam Rose Lévy, before attending the Lycée Napoléon (now Lycée Henri-IV). He was said to have been a rather inattentive but thoughtful pupil with a special interest in mathematics. In 1868, he was admitted to the Ecole normale supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
in Paris where he failed the agrégation
Agrégation
In France, the agrégation is a civil service competitive examination for some positions in the public education system. The laureates are known as agrégés...
examination which would have enabled him to enter the teaching profession, preferring instead to study physics. In 1872, the French government sent him on a mission to Heidelberg University where he was able to specialize in electricity with the encouragement of Gustav Kirchhoff, receiving a doctorate with the "summa cum laude" distinction in 1874. Lippmann then returned to Paris in 1875, where he continued to study until 1878, when he became professor of physics at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
.
Career
Lippmann made several important contributions to various branches of physics over the years.The capillary electrometer
One of Lippmann's early discoveries was the relationship between electrical and capillary phenomena which allowed him to develop a sensitive capillary electrometer, subsequently known as the Lippmann electrometerLippmann electrometer
A Lippmann electrometer is a device for detecting small rushes of electric current and was invented by Gabriel Lippmann. The device consists of a tube which is thick on one end and very thin on the other. The thin end is designed to act as a capillary tube. The tube is half-filled with mercury with...
which was used in the first ECG machine. In a paper delivered to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow on 17 January 1883, John G. M'Kendrick described the apparatus as follows:
- Lippmann's electrometer consists of a tube of ordinary glass, 1 metre long and 7 millimetres in diameter, open at both ends, and kept in the vertical position by a stout support. The lower end is drawn into a capillary point, until the diameter of the capillary is .005 of a millimetre. The tube is filled with mercury, and the capillary point is immersed in dilute sulphuric acid (1 to 6 of water in volume), and in the bottom of the vessel containing the acid there is a little more mercury. A platinum wire is put into connection with the mercury in each tube, and, finally, arrangements are made by which the capillary point can be seen with a microscope magnifying 250 diameters. Such an instrument is very sensitive; and Lippmann states that it is possible to determine a difference of potential so small as that of one 10,080th of a DaniellDaniell cellThe Daniell cell was invented in 1836 by John Frederic Daniell, a British chemist and meteorologist, and consisted of a copper pot filled with a copper sulfate solution, in which was immersed an unglazed earthenware container filled with sulfuric acid and a zinc electrode...
. It is thus a very delicate means of observing and (as it can be graduated by a compensation-method) of measuring minute electromotive forces.
Lippmann's PhD thesis, presented to the Sorbonne on 24 July 1875, was on electrocapillarity
Electrocapillarity
Electrocapillarity or Electrocapillary phenomena are the phenomena related to changes in the surface energy of the Dropping mercury electrode as the electrode potential changes or the electrolytic solution composition and concentration change...
.
Colour photography
Above all, Lippmann is remembered as the inventor of a method for reproducing colours by photography, based on the interference phenomenon, which earned him the Nobel Prize in PhysicsNobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
for 1908.
In 1886, Lippmann's interest turned to a method of fixing the colours of the solar spectrum
Visible spectrum
The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm. In terms of...
on a photographic plate
Photographic plate
Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a means of photography. A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was applied to a glass plate. This form of photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile...
. On 2 February 1891, he announced to the Academy of Sciences: "I have succeeded in obtaining the image of the spectrum with its colours on a photographic plate whereby the image remains fixed and can remain in daylight without deterioration." By April 1892, he was able to report that he had succeeded in producing colour images of a stained glass window, a group of flags, a bowl of oranges topped by a red poppy and a multicoloured parrot. He presented his theory of colour photography using the interference method in two papers to the Academy, one in 1894, the other in 1906.
Wave propagation
Wave propagation is any of the ways in which waves travel.With respect to the direction of the oscillation relative to the propagation direction, we can distinguish between longitudinal wave and transverse waves....
of light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
. When light of a given wavelength is reflected back upon itself by a mirror, standing wave
Standing wave
In physics, a standing wave – also known as a stationary wave – is a wave that remains in a constant position.This phenomenon can occur because the medium is moving in the opposite direction to the wave, or it can arise in a stationary medium as a result of interference between two waves traveling...
s are generated, much as the ripples resulting from a stone dropped into still water create standing waves when reflected back by a surface such as the wall of a pool. In the case of ordinary incoherent
Coherence (physics)
In physics, coherence is a property of waves that enables stationary interference. More generally, coherence describes all properties of the correlation between physical quantities of a wave....
light, the standing waves are distinct only within a microscopically thin volume of space next to the reflecting surface.
Lippmann made use of this phenomenon by projecting an image onto a special photographic plate
Photographic plate
Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a means of photography. A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was applied to a glass plate. This form of photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile...
capable of recording detail smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. The light passed through the supporting glass sheet into a very thin and nearly transparent photographic emulsion
Photographic emulsion
Photographic emulsion is a light-sensitive colloid, such as gelatin, coated onto a substrate. In silver-gelatin photography, the emulsion consists of silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin, and the substrate may be glass, plastic film, paper or fabric....
containing submicroscopic
Submicroscopic
Submicroscopic is an English adjective used to describe particles of matter that cannot be seen under the most powerful optical microscope available. Atoms are examples of such submicroscopic particles....
ally small silver halide
Silver halide
A silver halide is one of the compounds formed between silver and one of the halogens — silver bromide , chloride , iodide , and three forms of silver fluorides. As a group, they are often referred to as the silver halides, and are often given the pseudo-chemical notation AgX...
grains. A temporary mirror of liquid mercury in intimate contact reflected the light back through the emulsion, creating standing waves whose nodes
Node (physics)
A node is a point along a standing wave where the wave has minimal amplitude. For instance, in a vibrating guitar string, the ends of the string are nodes. By changing the position of the end node through frets, the guitarist changes the effective length of the vibrating string and thereby the...
had little effect while their antinodes
Node (physics)
A node is a point along a standing wave where the wave has minimal amplitude. For instance, in a vibrating guitar string, the ends of the string are nodes. By changing the position of the end node through frets, the guitarist changes the effective length of the vibrating string and thereby the...
created a latent image
Latent image
A latent image on photographic film is an invisible image produced by the exposure of the film to light. When the film is developed, the area that was exposed darkens and forms a visible image...
. After development
Photographic processing
Photographic processing is the chemical means by which photographic film and paper is treated after photographic exposure to produce a negative or positive image...
, the result was a structure of laminae, distinct parallel layers composed of submicroscopic metallic silver grains, which was a permanent record of the standing waves. In each part of the image, the spacing of the laminae corresponded to the wavelengths of the light photographed.
The finished plate was illuminated from the front at a nearly perpendicular
Perpendicular
In geometry, two lines or planes are considered perpendicular to each other if they form congruent adjacent angles . The term may be used as a noun or adjective...
angle, using daylight or another source of white light containing the full range of wavelengths in the visible spectrum
Visible spectrum
The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm. In terms of...
. At each point on the plate, light of approximately the same wavelength as the light which had generated the laminae was strongly reflected back toward the viewer. Light of other wavelengths which was not absorbed or scattered by the silver grains simply passed through the emulsion, usually to be absorbed by a black anti-reflection coating applied to the back of the plate after it had been developed. The wavelengths, and therefore the colours, of the light which had formed the original image were thus reconstituted and a full-colour image was seen.
The Lippmann process was not easy to use in practice. Extremely fine-grained high-resolution photographic emulsion
Photographic emulsion
Photographic emulsion is a light-sensitive colloid, such as gelatin, coated onto a substrate. In silver-gelatin photography, the emulsion consists of silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin, and the substrate may be glass, plastic film, paper or fabric....
s are inherently much less light-sensitive than ordinary emulsions, so long exposure times were required. With a lens of large aperture and a very brightly sunlit subject, a camera exposure of less than one minute was sometimes possible, but exposures measured in minutes were typical. Pure spectral colours reproduced brilliantly, but the ill-defined broad bands of wavelengths reflected by real-world objects could be problematic. The process did not produce colour prints on paper and it proved impossible to make a good duplicate of a Lippmann colour photograph by rephotographing it, so each image was unique. A very shallow-angled prism was usually cemented to the front of the finished plate to deflect unwanted surface reflections, and this made plates of any substantial size impractical. The lighting and viewing arrangement required to see the colours to best effect precluded casual use. Although the special plates and a plate holder with a built-in mercury reservoir were commercially available for a few years circa 1900, even expert users found consistent good results elusive and the process never graduated from being a scientifically elegant laboratory curiosity. It did, however, stimulate interest in the further development of colour photography
Color photography
Color photography is photography that uses media capable of representing colors, which are traditionally produced chemically during the photographic processing phase...
.
Lippmann's process foreshadowed laser
Laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
holography
Holography
Holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that when an imaging system is placed in the reconstructed beam, an image of the object will be seen even when the object is no longer present...
, which is also based on recording standing waves in a photographic medium. Denisyuk
Yuri Nikolaevich Denisyuk
Yuri Nikolaevich Denisyuk was a Soviet physicist known for his contribution to holography, in particular for the so-called "Denisyuk hologram".-External links:...
reflection holograms, often referred to as Lippmann-Bragg holograms, have similar laminar structures that preferentially reflect certain wavelengths. In the case of actual multiple-wavelength colour holograms of this type, the colour information is recorded and reproduced just as in the Lippmann process, except that the highly coherent laser light passing through the recording medium and reflected back from the subject generates the required distinct standing waves throughout a relatively large volume of space, eliminating the need for reflection to occur immediately adjacent to the recording medium. Unlike Lippmann colour photography, however, the lasers, the subject and the recording medium must all be kept stable to within one quarter of a wavelength during the exposure in order for the standing waves to be recorded adequately or at all.
Integral photography
In 1908, Lippmann introduced integral photographyIntegral imaging
Integral imaging is an autostereoscopic or multiscopic 3D display, meaning that it displays a 3D image without the use of special glasses on the part of the viewer. It achieves this by placing an array of microlenses in front of the image, where each lens looks different depending on viewing angle...
, in which a plane array of closely spaced small lenses is used to photograph a scene, recording images of the scene as it appears from many slightly different horizontal and vertical locations. When the resulting images are rectified and viewed through a similar array of lenses, a single integrated image, composed of small portions of all the images, is seen by each eye. The position of the eye determines which parts of the small images it sees. The effect is that the visual geometry of the original scene is reconstructed, so that the limits of the array seem to be the edges of a window through which the scene appears life-size and in three dimensions, realistically exhibiting parallax and perspective shift with any change in the position of the observer.
Measurement of time
In 1895, Lippmann evolved a method of eliminating the personal equation in measurements of time, using photographic registration, and he studied the eradication of irregularities of pendulum clockPendulum clock
A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element. The advantage of a pendulum for timekeeping is that it is a resonant device; it swings back and forth in a precise time interval dependent on its length, and resists swinging at other rates...
s, devising a method of comparing the times of oscillation of two pendulums of nearly equal period.
The coelostat
Lippmann also invented the coelostat, an astronomical tool that compensated for the Earth's rotation and allowed a region of the sky to be photographed without apparent movement.Academic affiliations
Lippmann was a member of the Academy of SciencesFrench Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
from 8 February 1886 until his death, serving as its President in 1912. In addition, he was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, a member of the Bureau des Longitudes
Bureau des Longitudes
The Bureau des Longitudes is a French scientific institution, founded by decree of 25 June 1795 and charged with the improvement of nautical navigation, standardisation of time-keeping, geodesy and astronomical observation. During the 19th century, it was responsible for synchronizing clocks...
, and a member of the Grand Ducal Institute
Grand Ducal Institute
Grand Ducal Institute is the national academy of Luxembourg, and is based in Luxembourg City in the south of the country.The Institute incorporates six subsections, each dedicated to a separate field of academic research:...
. He became a member of the Société française de photographie
Société française de photographie
The Société française de photographie is an association, founded in 1854, devoted to the history of photography. It has a large collection of photographs and old cameras...
in 1892 and its president from 1896 to 1899. Lippmann was one of the founders of the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée in France.
Marriage
Lippmann married the daughter of the novelist Victor CherbuliezVictor Cherbuliez
thumb|right|Victor CherbuliezCharles Victor Cherbuliez was a French novelist and author. He was the eleventh member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie française in 1881.-Biography:...
in 1888. He died on 13 July 1921 aboard the steamer France while en route from Canada.
Literature
- J.P. Pier & J.A. Massard (eds) (1997):Gabriel Lippmann: Commémoration par la section des sciences naturelles, physiques et mathématiques de l’Institut grand-ducal de Luxembourg du 150e anniversaire du savant né au Luxembourg, lauréat du prix Nobel en 1908. Luxembourg, Section des sciences naturelles, physiques et mathématiques de l’Institut grand-ducal de Luxembourg en collaboration avec le Séminaire de mathématique et le Séminaire d’histoire des sciences et de la médecine du centre universitaire de Luxembourg, 139 p.
- Lebon, Ernest, "Savants du jour : biographie, bibliographie analytique des écrits", comprenant Portrait de Gabriel Lippmann. - 1911. p. 70, Gauthier-Villars (Paris), 1909-1913.