Marko Antun de Dominis's theory of the rainbow
Teoría del arcoíris de Marko Antun de Dominis
- Date
- 1611 · confidence high
- Place
- Split, Croatia
- Credited to
- Marko Antun de Dominis, Archbishop of Split
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
In De radiis visus et lucis he explained the primary and secondary rainbow as light refracted, reflected inside and refracted again in raindrops, testing it with glass spheres full of water. It anticipated Descartes's analysis of 1637.
Theodoric of Freiberg (c. 1310) and Kamal al-Din al-Farisi (c. 1309) had already explained the rainbow with a sphere; de Dominis is the direct modern precedent, but his work appeared in Venice and circulated little. The place is uncertain (bishop of Senj and archbishop of Split, he wrote on the Adriatic).
What it led to
- Descartes's and Newton's geometrical explanation of the rainbow
- use of droplet models as an experimental tool