Retinal image: the eye as an optical system (Kepler)
Imagen retiniana: el ojo como sistema óptico (Kepler)
- Date
- 1604 · confidence high
- Place
- Prague, Czechia
- Credited to
- Johannes Kepler
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Kepler explains that the lens forms a real, inverted image on the retina, as in a camera obscura, and that concave and convex spectacles correct myopia and hyperopia. It founded modern physiological optics.
Platter (1583) had already identified the retina as the receptor, and Alhazen and Maurolico had explained the lens without an inverted image; Kepler's merit is the inverted retinal image, which Scheiner confirmed in 1625.
What it led to
- Scheiner's experiment with an ox eye (1625)
- the theory of correcting vision with lenses
- study of vision as an optical and neural process