The German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826) was the first to solve the problem of constructing achromatic lenses of high magnitude.

Joseph von Fraunhofer, the son of a poor glazier, was born on March 6, 1787, in Straubing, Bavaria. An orphan by the age of 12, he became an apprentice to a mirror maker in Munich. He spent his first pennies at the flea market on an elementary textbook of geometry which he studied in his spare time. On July 21, 1801, two houses collapsed in Munich, and of the people buried under the ruins, Fraunhofer was the only one found alive. The incident brought him to the attention of J. Niggl, an optical instrument maker, and J. Utzschneider, a Benedictine from Benediktbeuern. In 1807, when Fraunhofer had already mastered through private studies the best German university textbooks on optics, he was invited to work with a new optical-instrument-making firm established largely through Utzschneider's...