Thomas Young and the Wave Nature of Light

One of the milestones of the science of light commemorated during this International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies is «the notion of light as a wave proposed by Fresnel in 1815» that is, the celebration of the second centenary of the presentation of Augustin Fresnel’s paper titled Premier Mémoire sur la Diffraction de la Lumière before the Academy of Sciences in Paris on October 15, 1815 and which was published the following year. Fresnel contributed significantly to the establishment of the wave theory of light and thereafter this theory was very successful and resulted in a flood of new discoveries. However, it was a British erudite and physician called Thomas Young who convincingly demonstrated the wave nature of light –contrary to the ideas of Newton who believed light was composed of a stream of particles– through the double-slit experiment, known today as Young’s light-interference experiment