Famous optician: Augustin Fresnel and the wave theory of light

Honorary Professor, Physics Department, École polytechnique, Palaiseau, France

^* e-mail : jean-louis.basdevant@polytechnique.edu

Abstract

Augustin Fresnel was born in 1788, in the Normandy village of Broglie where his father was employed as an architect by the duc de Broglie. The author of the wave theory of light was thus born on lands that would later belong to Louis de Broglie, the author of the wave theory of matter, whose birth came a century later. Fresnel’s work was accomplished in less than a decade¹.