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Description:
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In 1669 the Dane, Erasmus Bartholinus (1625-1698), discovered that objects, when viewed through a crystal of a particular variety of clear calcium carbonate known as Iceland spar, appeared double – a phenomenon now known as double refraction.1 Unknown to Bartholinus at the time was the fact that the light passing through these crystals was also polarized – a phenomenon that was instead discovered by the French physicist, Etienne-Louis Malus (1775-1812), in 1809, along with the fact that light reflected from various surfaces was similarly polarized. |
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