The French physicist Augustin Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), through his analysis of interference, diffraction, and polarization, turned the wave theory of light into an integral part of exact physical science.

Augustin Jean Fresnel was born in Broglie on May 10, 1788. He received his elementary education on the family estate in Mathieu, Normandy, where his father, Jacques Fresnel, an architect, took refuge during the stormiest years of the Revolution. At the age of 16 Fresnel entered the École Polytechnique, where he excelled in mathematics but made little progress in physics. Following his graduation, Fresnel worked as an army engineer. In Nyons in early 1815, during the Hundred Days, he joined a group of royalists, and in the end he was decommissioned and sentenced to confinement. Because of ill health he was permitted to live in Normandy with his mother.

Fresnel began his research on light by attempting to understand the polarization of...