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Updated: June 18, 2025
One word more I should like to say regarding Fresnel. There are things better even than science. Character is higher than Intellect, but it is especially pleasant to those who wish to think well of human nature when high intellect and upright character are found combined. They were combined in this young Frenchman.
The discoveries of Grimaldi and of Fresnel in regard to interferences, those of Faraday, of Arago, of Foucault, of Fraunhofer, of Kirchoff, and of hundreds of others owed something to "fortune." It is said that the sight of a crab suggested to Watt the idea of an ingenious machine.
After Fresnel's admission to the Institute in 1823 the opposition weakened, and gradually the philosophers came to realize the merits of a theory which Young had vainly called to their attention a full quarter-century before. Now, thanks largely to Arago, both Young and Fresnel received their full meed of appreciation.
The flame is located in the focus of a Fresnel lens, b, consisting of superposed prismatic rings, and adjusted at its lower part with a circle, d, while a conical ring, e makes a joint at its other extremity. This ring is held by the top piece of the lantern through the intermedium of six spiral springs, c' c''. Under the focus of the flame there is placed a conical reflector of German silver, t.
He showed that the facts discovered by Malus, Arago, Brewster, and Biot were so many ganglia, so to speak, of his theoretic organism, deriving from it sustenance and explanation. With a mind too strong for the body with which it was associated, that body became a wreck long before it had become old, and Fresnel died, leaving, however, behind him a name immortal in the annals of science.
Great is the number of ten-sous pieces spent in the four-sous stalls! The professor saw a pamphlet by Vicq-d'Azyr, a complete Charles Bonnet in the edition of Fauche Borel, and an essay on Malus. "And such then is the sum of our achievements," he said to himself. "Malus! A genius arrested in his course when he had almost captured the empire of light! But we have had Fresnel.
Fresnel was twenty-six when he made his first important discoveries in the same field; and Arago, who at once became his champion, was then but two years his senior, though for a decade he had been so famous that one involuntarily thinks of him as belonging to an elder generation.
We have now only to mention the two expeditions of the French naturalists, Aucher Eloy in the country of Oman, and Emile Botta in Yemen, and to refer to the labours in reference to the idioms and antiquities of Arabia of the French consul at Djedda, Fulgence Fresnel.
The most that can positively be asserted, therefore, is that all the known forms of radiant energy-heat, light, electro-magnetism travel through space at the same rate of speed, and consist of traverse vibrations "lateral quivers," as Fresnel said of light known to differ in length, and not positively known to differ otherwise.
He finally showed that the difficulty of polarization yielded to the grasp of theory. After him came Fresnel, whose transcendent mathematical abilities enabled him to give the theory a generality unattained by Young. He seized it in its entirety; followed the ether into the hearts of crystals of the most complicated structure, and into bodies subjected to strain and pressure.
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