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Thomas Harriot and the Sine Law of Refraction

Ronald S. Fishman, MD

Arch Ophthalmol. 2000;118:405-409.

A talented young scientist, Thomas Harriot, wrote the first English account of the New World, "A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia," distinguished by its serious effort to describe and understand the American Indian. Harriot went on to make innovations in mathematics and was one of the first astronomers to use the telescope. His largely unappreciated contribution to the history of ophthalmology was the first formulation of the sine law of refraction of light, found in his unpublished papers long after his death in 1621. Willebrord Snell discovered the sine law in Holland in 1621 but also died without formally publishing it. René Descartes first published the sine law in 1637. The sine law of refraction became not only the prime law of all lens systems but ushered in a new world of physical laws.

From the Welch Institute of History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.