Abstract
1.—Introduction. THE discovery of optical rotatory dispersion may be said to have preceded rather than followed the discovery of optical rotatory power, since it was the unequal rotation of the plane of polarisation of lights of different wave-lengths which gave rise to the sequence of beautiful colours which Arago described in 1811 as being produced by the interposition of quartz plates between a polariser and analyser set to extinction. These colours were shown by Biot in 1812 to be due to a rotation of the plane of polarisation which increased with the thickness of the quartz plate and with change of colour from red to violet. When, therefore, a beam of polarised light had passed through a quartz plate it was impossible any longer to extinguish all the colours simultaneously with any one setting of the analyser.
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LOWRY, T., AUSTIN, P. Optical Rotatory Dispersion1. Nature 109, 447–450 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109447a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109447a0